HURRICANE Matthew swept past Cuba yesterday after killing at least five Haitians and driving thousands from their homes.

Twenty-foot waves pounded the seafront promenade in the eastern Cuban town of Baracoa and heavy rain caused some flooding, but national media said late on Tuesday there were no immediate reports of serious damage.

Hours after the 145mph hurricane hit Haiti’s south-western peninsula, government leaders said they could not fully gauge the effects.

“What we know is that many, many houses have been damaged. Some lost rooftops and they’ll have to be replaced while others were totally destroyed,” Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph said.

At least five deaths were blamed on the storm in Haiti, including a man who drowned trying to rescue a child from a rushing river, authorities said. The child was saved.

The mayor in the flooded town of Petit Goave reported two people died there, including a woman who was killed by a falling electrical pole.

Four deaths were recorded in the neighbouring Dominican Republic and one each in Colombia and St Vincent and the Grenadines, bringing the total so far to 11.

UN Deputy Special Representative for Haiti Mourad Wahba called the hurricane’s destruction the “largest humanitarian event” in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of January 2010.

He said at least 10,000 people were in shelters and hospitals were overflowing as well as running short of water.

Matthew is expected to hit the US Florida coast on Thursday evening after passing over the Bahamas. The state of South Carolina, north of Florida, began evacuating a million people yesterday.