"A few seconds later and it all would have fallen on top of me," he told AFP, surveying the ruins of his home in the town of El Cobre.

Figueredo is grateful to be alive but like many on the Communist island, which was already limping through its worst economic crisis in three decades when Melissa slammed into it on Tuesday night, he doesn't know how he will ever rebuild.

Th 52-year-old former gold miner, who has had difficulty walking since an mining accident seven years ago, was in bed when Melissa churned past at up to 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour.

The ferocious storm reduced El Cobre, the 7,000-population home of a sanctuary to the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba's patron saint, to rubble.

All that remains of Figueredo's house is a chunk of the living-room.

Bricks, tiles, doors, and windows lie scattered on the ground.

"My situation is desperate," said the miner, dismissing his state pension of 3,000 Cuban pesos (US$6 at the informal exchange rate) as "not enough for anything."

- 'National tragedy' -

Melissa did not cause fatalities in Cuba, according to authorities, but it knocked the stuffing out of the impoverished Caribbean nation, where fuel, electricity, hard currency and affordable foodstuffs were already in short supply.

The storm smashed windows, downed power cables and mobile communications, tore off roofs and tree branches and flooded streets and homes.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel described the damage as "extensive."

"We're in dire circumstances," said Rogelio de Dean, 45, a priest in El Cobre, whose church also suffered damage.

"The national tragedy left by the cyclone now adds to the already difficult daily reality of our people," the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba, which launched an appeal for donations, emphasized in a statement.

Among the inhabitants of El Cobre and surrounding towns the mood was one of deep despair.

Melissa "killed us," said 65-year-old Felicia Correa, from a hamlet close to El Cobre.

"We were already going through tremendous hardship. Now, of course, we are much worse off."

- US aid offer rebuffed -

From a very low base of just two-and-a-half hours of electricity a day, inhabitants of the region now have none, with Melissa knocking out power to six of 15 provinces.

The government has declared the restoration of power a "priority" and efforts are under way to get humanitarian aid to the affected provinces.

Meanwhile, aid offers and pledges have been pouring in.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced ple were killed.

Venezuela sent 26,000 tons of humanitarian aid to its historic ally Cuba.

The United States, which has maintained a six-decade-long trade embargo on Cuba, also rowed in with an offer for "immediate humanitarian assistance for "the brave Cuban people."

Cuba wasted no time in rebuffing the proposal.

"If that administration's desire to support our people were sincere, they would have unconditionally lifted the criminal blockade," Roberto Morales Ojeda, a member of the Communist Party of Cuba's Politburo wrote on X.

He added that Washington could further help by removing the island of 9.7 million people from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Former President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the list a week before leaving the White House, a decision that Trump reversed on his first day back in office.