A human rights group reported Friday a worrying rise in politically-motivated arrests in Cuba, which it linked to worsening economic conditions on the communist-ruled island.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said authorities made 909 arrests of dissidents in October, one of the highest monthly totals in the past decade.

Only a dozen prisoners remain on hunger strike at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, eight months after the start of their protest fast.

While some detainees may well one day refuse to take food again, for now most have chosen to end their hunger strike, attorneys for the inmates said.

A record-equaling 188 countries on Tuesday condemned the five-decade-old U.S. embargo against communist Cuba in an annual U.N. General Assembly vote that signaled hardening opposition to U.S. sanctions.

Only Israel joined the United States in opposing resolution, the smallest number ever. Last year two allies voted with the U.S. government.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Monday demanded the United States explain abuses allegedly committed at Guantanamo prison, especially its practice of force-feeding inmates on hunger strike.

"The information we have indicates that there was a general and systematic violation of human rights" in Guantanamo, said Rodrigo Escobar Gil, one of the Washington-based body's seven commissioners.

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of the 9/11 attacks said Tuesday their defendants' rights were violated because they are prevented from open discussion of alleged mistreatment in secret prisons.

Speaking at a hearing in Guantanamo as the five detainees listened, lawyers for the men asked for the death penalty to be eliminated as a possible sentence, in light of alleged torture the inmates had undergone while being held by the United States, before their 2006 transfer to Guantanamo.

Cuba and the United States have reached a rare preliminary agreement on working together more closely, in the field of air and maritime rescue, Havana's state newspaper Granma said.

Every year thousands of Cubans leave the country illegally aboard fragile boats to try to reach Florida, which is 145 kilometers (90 miles) away.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa met Friday with Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his younger brother, President Raul Castro, the leftist South American leader said.

Correa was in Cuba to inspect homes being built by Ecuadoran military engineers in Santiago de Cuba, 900 kilometers (560 miles) south-east of Havana, part of an aid package for the island following the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.

The United States has issued an advisory for travelers to Cuba after several foreign visitors were sickened by cholera in recent weeks.

In a security message dated Tuesday, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana recommended visitors and U.S. citizens living on the island avoid untreated water, street food and under- or uncooked dishes such as ceviche.

Fidel Castro credited North Korea Wednesday with supplying Cuba with free weapons in the 1980s after the Soviet Union said it could no longer defend the island against a U.S. invasion.

Castro's reminiscence in an article published Wednesday came as U.N. experts were scrutinizing a shipment of Cuban arms to North Korea to determine if they violated a U.N. ban.

Guantanamo detainees are marking six months of an unprecedented hunger strike that has trained attention on the more than 150 men held at the U.S. military prison without charge or trial.

The strike began on February 6 as a spontaneous reaction to a cell sweep in which guards allegedly mishandled copies of the Koran, but soon grew into a mass protest against the legal limbo within the walls of the War on Terror prison.