Under sheets of rain and laden with possessions, residents of southeast Cuba fled inland Tuesday -- escaping the peril of the coast before Hurricane Melissa's arrival.

Carrying loved ones and a handful of quickly snatched belongings, families trekked along narrow paths slick with mud and fringed by dense greenery, heading to relative safety.

Others, visibly distraught, squeezed onto crowded buses -- gripping handrails and bags -- or loaded onto lorries waiting to be spirited away.

Already, curtains of rain, dark skies, and raging seas have touched Cuba.

"It scares me, but what scares me even more is being away from home and having everything I own taken away," 82-year-old Floraida Duany told AFP.

The storm is expected to make landfall on the Communist-run island in the early hours of

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