(CNN) -- Cuba on Friday suspended delivery of mail destined for the United States, saying the letters were being turned back because of anti-terrorist measures in the United States.
The U.S. Postal Service confirmed that there are "some issues" connected with the Transportation Security Administration that it said has caused mail to "accumulate."
The Postal Service is still accepting mail from Cuba, spokesman Dave Lewin said in a written statement. But as airlines that carry the Cuban mail "were attempting to meet the TSA requirements the mail piled up. Air carriers ran out of space and began returning mail to Cuba," he said.
There is no direct mail service between the two countries, so Cuba sends mail through Canada and Mexico.
The Cuban postal service released a statement saying: "Until further notice, our postal offices cannot accept any kind of shipment to the United States."
It added that it was forced to suspend service because the airlines that it uses to ship mail through third countries "have returned all of the correspondence" as a result of the new security measures in the United States.
"There have been some issues regarding some TSA initiatives implemented in November," Lewin's statement said, describing those initiatives as "post cargo bomb threat" requirements.
In late October, bombs were discovered packed in printer toner cartridges mailed from Yemen to the United States. The packages were discovered on airplanes before getting to the United States.
Many Cubans use the traditional postal system to send messages to relatives in the United States, in part because phone calls are prohibitively expensive and the internet is not readily accessible.
From Shasta Darlington, CNN
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