CUBA announced on Sunday that it had received a massive shipment of rice from China.

The 15,000-tonne shipment, the first of an expected donation of 60,000 tonnes of rice, comes as humanitarian conditions continue to worsen on the Caribbean island.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel took to social media on Sunday to confirm the rice had arrived the previous day to the port of Havana, expressing the “deep gratitude” of the people of Cuba to China and to members of the European Parliament who have condemned the pressure being applied against his country by United States President Donald Trump.

Since January, the US has ramped up the sanctions against Cuba.

“Thank you very much for the solidarity, and for the firm and unequivocal condemnation of the collective punishment to which our people are being subjected,” Mr Diaz-Canel wrote, likening Cuba’s situation to genocide.

China has already donated solar panels to help update Cuba’s ageing energy grid and move the island away from fossil fuels. 

Currently, Cuba relies on imports for nearly 60 per cent of its oil supply, according to the International Energy Agency, but since the start of the year, the Trump administration has blocked the sale or donation of oil to Cuba.

The oil blockade followed an illegal and unprovoked attack by the US on Venezuela on January 3 in which 100 people were killed and the country’s president Nicolas Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores were kidnapped and imprisoned in the US.

Mr Trump followed the military action by announcing that no more oil or funds would be transferred from Venezuela to Cuba.

The far-right US president announced at the end of January that he had signed an executive order that identified Cuba — without evidence — as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and threatening economic penalties to any country that supplies it with oil.

Since then only a single Russian tanker has been permitted to reach the island. Earlier this month, Cuban Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said that the island had exhausted its oil supplies. The recent crisis has caused islandwide blackouts and has brought public services, including transport and medical care, to a standstill in many parts.

Mr Trump has also repeatedly suggested he is considering launching a military attack on Cuba, and last week his administration levelled a murder charge against Cuba’s former president Raul Castro for the 1996 downing of two planes flown by a Cuban exile group heading into Cuban territory.