Hurricane Matthew hit Cuba and Haiti with 140 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds on Tuesday Oct 04,2016

Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, hit Cuba and Haiti with 140 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds on Tuesday, pummeling towns, farmland and resorts, and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to take cover.

Dubbed by the UN the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, the Category Four hurricane unleashed torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola that Haiti shares with Dominican Republic.

As it barreled towards the United States, the eye of the storm had reached the coast of eastern Cuba by Tuesday evening, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said

At least four people were killed in the Dominican Republic by collapsing walls and mudslides, as well as two in Haiti, where communications in the worst-hit areas were down, making it hard for authorities to assess the scale of the damage.

"Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the earthquake six years ago," said Mourad Wahba, the UN Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Haiti.