Huge tornado in Cuba kills 3 and injures 172

Dramatic photos show debris covering cars and flooding in coastal zones of the city.

Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel visited emergency crews around the city overnight and wrote on Twitter that the damage was "severe."

Police cordon off a street in Havana after the tornado.

Strong winds damaged buildings and caused flooding in low-lying areas of Havana, according to a government statement, with the provinces of Pinar del Río, Artemisa and Mayabeque also affected.

The Cuban Meteorological Institute will evaluate the extent of the damage and the intensity of the storm in the next few hours, the statement said.

Cuban actor Luis Silva said he was driving with his wife and children when the tornado struck.

"I had to avoid fallen trees, floods, strong winds. Until I was able to get home!" he wrote in an Instagram post. "We had a big scare."

Strong winds knocked down utility poles.

The tornado left much of the city in darkness.

Staff at the Hijas de Galicia maternity hospital evacuated the building because of storm damage, the AFP news agency reported.

Locals said the tornado had "the sound of a jet engine," and they felt changes in environmental pressure as it hit, Armando Caymares of Cuba's Institute of Meteorology told AFP.

Damage to infrastructure left much of the city without electricity.

The island nation regularly suffers extreme weather events such as hurricanes and Atlantic storms.

It sits in the Caribbean Sea, which is vulnerable to hurricanes from June 1 to November 30.

In September 2017, 10 people died in Cuba as a result of Hurricane Irma, with seven of these deaths in Havana, according to state television.

Irma made landfall in Cuba as a Category 5 storm, blasting into seaside towns and causing flooding in low-lying areas of Havana. Winds of 125 mph whipped roofs off buildings, ripped trees from the ground and forced evacuations along the coast.

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