KINGSTON - Hurricane Melissa churned toward Cuba's second-largest city with the force of a powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday, hours after making landfall in neighboring Jamaica as the strongest-ever cyclone on record to hit that Caribbean island nation.

Melissa roared ashore near Jamaica's southwestern town of New Hope, packing sustained winds of up to 295 km/h, according to the US National Hurricane Center, well above the minimum 252 km/h wind speed of a Category 5 storm, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

In southwestern Jamaica, the parish of St. Elizabeth was left "underwater," an official said, with more than 500,000 residents without power.

"The reports that we have had so far would include damage to hospitals, significant damage to residential property, housing and commercial property as well, and damage to our road infrastructure," Jamaica's Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on CNN after the storm had passed.

Holness said the government had not received any confirmed storm-related fatalities, but given the strength of the hurricane and the extent of the damage, "we are expecting that there would be some loss of life."

Melissa's winds subsided to 233 km/h, the NHC said, as the storm drifted past the mountainous island, lashing highland communities vulnerable to landslides and flooding.

The hurricane was forecast to curve to the northeast on a trajectory toward Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's second-most populous city.

"We should already be feeling its main influence this afternoon and evening," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a message published in state newspaper Granma, calling on citizens to heed evacuation orders.

"There will be a lot of work to do. We know that this cyclone will cause significant damage."

Cuban authorities said some 500,000 people were ordered to move to higher ground. In the Bahamas, next in Melissa's path to the northeast, the government ordered evacuations of residents in southern portions of that archipelago.

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Farther to the east, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic had faced days of torrential downpours leading to at least four deaths, authorities there said.

Local media reported at least three deaths in Jamaica during storm preparations, and a disaster coordinator suffered a stroke in the onset of the storm and was rushed to hospital. Late Tuesday, many areas remained cut off.

Jamaica's 'storm of the century'

No stranger to hurricanes, Jamaica had never before been known to take a direct hit from a Category 4 or 5 storm, and the government called for foreign aid even as it prepared for Melissa's arrival.

Meteorologists at AccuWeather said Melissa ranked as the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988 - the last major storm to make landfall in Jamaica.

"It's a catastrophic situation," the World Meteorological Organization's tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan told a press briefing, warning of storm surges up to 4 meters high. "For Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure."

Colin Bogle, an adviser to aid group Mercy Corps in Portmore, near Jamaica's capital of Kingston, said he had heard a loud explosion in the morning before everything went dark. Sheltering with his grandmother, he heard relentless noise and saw trees violently tossed in the wind.

"People are scared. Memories of Hurricane Gilbert run deep, and there is frustration that Jamaica continues to face the worst consequences of a climate crisis we did not cause," he said.

Scientists warn that storms are intensifying faster with greater frequency as a result of warming ocean waters. Many Caribbean leaders have called on wealthy, heavy-polluting nations to provide reparations in the form of aid or debt relief to tropical island countries.

Melissa's size and strength ballooned as it churned over unusually tepid Caribbean waters, but forecasters warned that its slow movement could prove particularly destructive.

Food aid will be critical, Bogle said, as well as tools, vehicle parts and seeds for farmers. Like last year's devastating Hurricane Beryl, Melissa crossed over some of Jamaica's most productive agricultural zones.

On Monday, Holness said the government had an emergency budget of $33 million and insurance and credit provisions for damage a little greater than Beryl.

'Like a roaring lion'

Melissa made landfall in southwestern Jamaica, near the parish border between Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth, one of the areas hardest-hit by Beryl.

St. Elizabeth was submerged by flooding, local government minister Desmond McKenzie told a press briefing. Its only public hospital lost power and reported severe damage to one of its buildings.

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Several families were known to have been stranded in their homes, but rescue teams managed to reach one group that included four babies, McKenzie said.

In Portland Cottage, some 150 km away from where Melissa made landfall, Collin Henry McDonald, 64, a retiree, told Reuters as the storm advanced that his community was seeing strong rain and winds, but his concrete roof was holding steady.

"It's like a roaring lion. It's mad. Really mad," he said.

Around 15,000 Jamaicans were in temporary shelters by late Tuesday, McKenzie said. The government had issued mandatory evacuation orders for 28,000 people, but many were reluctant to leave their homes.

The International Federation of the Red Cross said up to 1.5 million people in Jamaica were expected to be directly affected by the storm.