MEXICO CITY, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Hurricane Matthew has so far claimed at least 10 lives in the Caribbean, where it hit Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba before heading north towards the Bahamas on Wednesday.
While the full extent of the damage has yet to be determined, "at least 350,000 people need immediate assistance" in Haiti, the United Nations said citing government sources.
Impoverished Haiti, still recovering from a devastating earthquake in 2010, appears to have been the hardest hit by the storm, a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale at the time.
The destruction led the government there to postpone long-delayed presidential elections that were to take place Sunday, as officials decided to deal with the immediate aftermath of the hurricane.
Preliminary reports said six people were killed and another remains missing in Haiti, where the Ministry of Education canceled classes on Wednesday. Most schools are serving as temporary shelters for those displaced by flooding or damaged homes.
South Haiti bore the brunt of the damage. A major bridge linking southern Haiti to the capital Port-au-Prince collapsed, the UN and other sources said.
The mayor of the southern town of Cavaillon, which was devastated by Matthew, told the daily Le Nouvelliste "a mother and her two children, and another nine-year-old child, were swept away by flood waters."
In the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, at least four people have been reported killed, including three minors, and some 36,000 people displaced.
The minors, two of them siblings, were killed in landslides caused on Tuesday by heavy rains. While the fourth victim was a 55-year-old man crushed to death when the wall of his home collapsed.
As Matthew barreled northwards towards the Bahamas and the U.S. state of Florida, the Dominican Center for Emergency Operations said in a press conference that warnings remained in place due to continued rain and coastal flooding.
In Cuba, the three worst-hit towns -- Baracoa, Imias and Maisi -- are all in the southernmost province of Guantanamo, state daily Granma reported.
The towns are "in the first stage of recovering power, water, roadways, communications and more," the daily said, adding officials were still unable to fully assess the damage as communication with the communities was cut off.
In Baracoa at least, the daily said no casualties were reported although brick homes were totally demolished by the storm, thanks largely to Cuba's massive evacuation campaign.
Cuba's disaster prevention system was praised by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who "lauded the preparedness efforts of the Cuban authorities, media and civil society to protect people's lives and economic assets."
Matthew was downgraded to a category 3 hurricane as it bore down on the Bahamas.