Hurricane Melissa tore a path of destruction across Jamaica on Tuesday, prompting the prime minister to declare the country a disaster area, after the storm made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane, one of the most powerful landfalls on record in the Atlantic basin.

The scale of the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa is emerging, with dozens of people known to have died in Haiti and four deaths reported in Jamaica - and the storm is now approaching the Bahamas.