Cuba's power grid collapsed on Sunday evening for the fourth time in two days, plunging much of the island nation into darkness as Hurricane Oscar made landfall in eastern Cuba as a Category 1 storm.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed the preliminary death toll after Oscar made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane but provided no details of how the deaths had occurred.

Cubans in the eastern provinces of Holguín and Guantánamo braced for a direct hit by Hurricane Oscar on Sunday afternoon. As the Category 1 hurricane made landfall near Baracoa, a coastal in city in Guantánamo province, around 5:50 p.m., most of the country still had no power.