Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, is powering towards the Bahamas and the US coast after battering Haiti and Cuba with torrential rain.
Dubbed by the UN as the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, the hurricane whipped Cuba and Haiti with 230 kph winds, pummeling towns, farmland and resorts.
Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from the storm, which caused severe flooding and killed four people in Dominican Republic as well as at least two in Haiti, the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola.
Matthew was downgraded from a Category Four to a Category Three storm early on Wednesday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Mourad Wahba, the UN Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Haiti, said "much of the population" had been displaced by Matthew and at least 10,000 were in shelter.
"Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the earthquake six years ago," he said.
Initial reports from Cuban state media suggested the Communist island had not suffered especially severe damage.
Blowing sustained winds of 201 kph by early Wednesday according to the NHC, Matthew thrashed the tourist town of Baracoa in the province of Guantanamo, passing close to the disputed US Naval base and military prison.
The US Navy ordered 700 spouses and children along with 65 pets of service personnel evacuated as the storm approached.
The eye of the storm was about 56 km north-northwest of the eastern tip of Cuba early on Wednesday, and Matthew is expected to be very near the east coast of Florida by Thursday evening local time after moving through the Bahamas, the NHC said.
Hurricane and tropical storm warnings were issued for parts of Florida as the storm moved north, the NHC said.
