Hurricane Melissa is grinding across Cuba as a category two storm after pummelling Jamaica as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, the US National Hurricane Centre says.

At least one death was reported in Jamaica, where Melissa roared ashore on Tuesday with top sustained winds of 295 km/h.

A tree fell on a baby in the island’s west, Abka Fitz-Henley, a state minister, told Nationwide News Network, a local radio station, adding that most of the destruction was concentrated in the southwest and northwest.

Flooding from Hurricane Melissa killed 40 people in nearby Haiti, officials said. Loading Tweet

Jean Bertrand Subrème, mayor of the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goâve, told the Associated Press that 25 people died after La Digue river burst its banks and floode

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