PORT-AU-PRINCE, Muharram 03, 1438, October 04, 2016, SPA -- Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Haiti’s southwestern coast Tuesday, threatening a largely rural corner of the nation with devastating storm conditions as it headed north toward Cuba and the eastern coast of Florida. The Category 4 storm made landfall around dawn on Haiti’s southern peninsula, where many people live along the coast in shacks of wood or simple concrete blocks that are ill-suited to the force of the system’s maximum sustained winds of 230 kilometers per hour (kph). According to the director of Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency, Matthew was causing major damage though the extent was not immediately known. “It’s much too early to know how bad things are but we do know there are a lot of houses that have been destroyed or damaged in the south,” Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste told The Associated Press (AP). Authorities had attempted to evacuate people from the most vulnerable areas ahead of the storm but many had been reluctant to leave their property. Some sought shelter only after the worst already was upon them. Matthew was expected to bring up to 100 centimeters of rain, along with up to 3 meters of storm surge and battering waves, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was moving along the Windward Passage between Haiti and Jamaica, where it also was dumping heavy rain that caused flooding in parts of the country. It was headed for southeastern Cuba and then into the Bahamas. --SPA 18:49 LOCAL TIME 15:49 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w