Hurricane Irma made landfall as a maximum-strength Category Five storm late Friday, US forecasters said, after leaving a trail of death and destruction on a string of Caribbean islands.

At 0300 GMT, the monster storm had made landfall on the communist island's Camaguey Archipelago, with the eye of the storm just 190 kilometers (120 miles) east-southeast of the Cuban city of Caibarien, and 300 miles south-southeast of Miami, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

It had maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers per hour and was moving west at 20 kilometers per hour, also posing an increasing threat to the US state of Florida