Havana, Jul 23 (IANS): The Cuban government has denounced the latest sanctions imposed against the island nation by the US administration.

"I refute the unfounded and slanderous US government sanctions against Army Corp General Alvaro Lopez Miera and the National Special Brigade," Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

"I denounce that the State Department is exercising offensive and humiliating pressures on European countries, particularly six from Eastern Europe, and eight from Latin America, to force them to support a declaration condemning Cuba," he added.

Earlier in the day, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against Miera and an elite military unit popularly known as the "black wasps" for their participation in the "rebuke" of protests this month in Cuba.

The new sanctions come amid the worst outbreak of Covid-19 Cuba has seen to date, with a rise in infections, deaths and hospitalisations.