HAVANA, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Tropical storm Laura grazed Cuba's southern coast Monday morning as it moved westward after hitting the island's five eastern provinces with heavy rains and hurricane-force winds, local authorities reported.
At dawn, Laura was advancing through the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, near the central coast, at a speed of 33 kilometers per hour and with maximum sustained winds of 100 kilometers per hour.
Experts from Cuba's Institute of Meteorology (Insmet) forecast the storm will gain intensity as it moves over the region's warm waters.
The National Civil Defense put the central provinces on alert in the face of the danger posed by the storm.
The center of the storm made landfall Sunday night in Baconao, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, 860 kilometers southeast of Havana, dumping heavy rainfall in several locations.
In Santiago de Cuba and the neighboring provinces of Granma and Guantanamo, the storm uprooted trees and damaged electrical and telephone lines.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel previously met with members of the National Defense Council to assess the situation and adopt the corresponding measures, and called on the population not to underestimate the magnitude of the meteorological event.
Authorities in the capital announced they were preparing for "the worst case scenario" should the storm strengthen into a cyclone.
Laura is expected to move on from Cuba Monday night or Tuesday morning, to enter the Gulf of Mexico as it heads towards the United States. According to local media, Laura has led to the deaths of nine people in Haiti and at least four died in the Dominican Republic.
This year's hurricane season in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, is the first to record the formation of nine tropical storms before Aug. 1. Enditem
