Havana residents Thursday confirmed picking up hundreds of wind-borne anti-Castro leaflets dropped by Miami exile Jose Basulto on the third anniversary of Cuba's downing of two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes.

The Cuban government claimed the leaflets came from an unmanned balloon, but Basulto said he dropped the 500,000 pamphlets by hand out the door of his single-engine Cessna 337 at an altitude of 10,000 feet Wednesday as he flew 20 miles off the Cuban coast -- well within international air space.

Basulto said some of the leaflets carried the first names of the four pilots killed in the incident and the message ``They Live!'' Others read, ``Comrades No! Brothers!'' Both had passages from the Universal Human Rights Declaration on the reverse side.

A U.S. Weather Service spokesman in Miami said the wind direction and altitude at the time of the drop made it possible for the leaflets to reach land.

``Yes, they could have reached Cuba,'' the spokesman said. ``It is possible.''

Some leaflets landed near the Havana Libre Hotel in the central part of the capital and others as far away as the Lawton neighborhood, a 20-minute drive inland, and the municipality of Cojimar, about 30 minutes east of Havana, according to foreign residents.

The French news agency Agence France-Presse reported from Havana that ``thousands'' of leaflets had fallen on the capital.