A tornado and pounding rain have smashed into the east of Cuba’s capital, toppling trees, bending electricity poles and throwing shards of metal roofing through the air as the storm cut across eastern Havana.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on Monday at least three people had been killed and 172 injured, as power was cut to many areas.

Julio Menendez, 33, a restaurant worker, said Havana’s Diez de Octubre district looked “like a horror movie”. “From one moment to the next, we heard a noise like an airplane falling out of the sky. The first thing I did was go hug my daughters.”

Oster Rodriguez, a driver, said amid a fierce storm, what looked like a thick, swirling cloud touched down in the central plaza of the Reparto Modelo neighbourhood “like a fireball”. He also saw a bus blow over, though the driver managed to escape unharmed.

The windows in the seven-storey Daughters of Galicia hospital were sucked out of their frames by the wind, leaving curtains flapping in the breeze. All the patients, including new and expectant mothers, had to be evacuated. In the streets, a 9-metre-tall palm tree had crushed a car.

Estamos recorriendo lugares afectados por fenómeno atmosférico de gran intensidad en Regla. Los daños son severos, hasta el momento lamentamos la pérdida de 3 vidas humanas y se atienden 172 heridos. Varias brigadas trabajando ya en el restablecimiento #SomosCuba pic.twitter.com/mPo9yAnaZy — Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 28, 2019

A government meteorologist said the tornado was category F3, with winds between 155 and 199mph (250 to 320km/h). Miguel Angel Hernandez of the Cuban Meteorology Institute said tornadoes were unusual around the capital and a strong one had not hit the city in decades. Sunday night’s storm was produced when a cold front hit Cuba’s northern coast, similar to one that struck in 1993, although without producing a tornado, he said.

Around Havana, cars were crushed by fallen lamp-posts and vehicles were trapped in flood waters. The neighbourhoods of Regla and Diez de Octubre appeared to have suffered the worst damage.

State media said Havana had been hit by winds in excess of 60mph. Leanys Calvo, a restaurant cook in Diez de Octubre, said she was working on Sunday night, despite the heavy rain and wind, when she heard a rumbling noise and looked outside to see what appeared to be a tornado touching down.

“It touched down and then took off again. It was like a tower,” she said, describing it as displaying red and green colours. “It was here for two to three seconds, nothing more. They were the most frightening seconds of my life.”

The tornado tore off the concrete roof of an apartment building in Regla and dumped it into an alley, briefly trapping residents in their homes.

Marlene Marrero Garcia, 77, said she was in her ground-floor flat with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren on Sunday night when she heard electrical transformers begin to explode. Then the tornado passed.

“It looked like fire, everything was red, then everything began to fall,” she said. Marrero Garcia said she and her family were trapped by debris for about half an hour before firefighters arrived.

She and other residents said two of their neighbours had been taken to hospital.