By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

              HAVANA (AP) -- Vast portions of Cuba were still without power and
              communications Monday after Hurricane Michelle swept across the island
              overnight, killing at least five people and flooding crops before pulling away
              to strike the Bahamas.

              The hurricane, which killed 12 people in Honduras, Nicaragua and Jamaica
              last week, lost some strength as it moved off Cuba, and it left Florida
              virtually untouched.

              Michelle swept past the Bahamas capital of Nassau on Monday with 85 mph
              winds, flooding houses and cutting power. At 7 p.m. EST, the storm was
              centered about 200 miles east-northeast of Nassau after approaching from
              the southwest, and was rapidly moving away in the same direction.

              When the storm made landfall in Cuba on Sunday, its winds were estimated
              at 130 mph.

              Michelle caused at least 23 homes to collapse in Havana, state television
              reported, saying that more were expected to crumble as they dried out in the
              sun. By Monday, the streets of the Cuban capital's colonial district were
              littered with debris.

              Reporters who toured rural parts of Matanzas and Villa Clara provinces east
              of Havana found hundreds homes damaged but only a few destroyed.

              ``We were rebuilding the house,'' Jose Ramon Pedrozo said quietly as he
              tried to rescue a few wooden planks that once formed part of his modest
              home in Solis Viejo, a small town in hard-hit Matanzas. ``Now we're going
              to start all over.''

              The narrow streets in Solis Viejo and other towns in the central Cuban
              region were littered with palm branches and tiles blown off buildings.
              Downed utility poles lay scattered in parks and front yards.

              Switched off by the government after Michelle hit Sunday afternoon,
              electricity remained shut down across the western half of the island. The
              750,000 people evacuated before the storm had not been allowed to return
              home by early Monday afternoon.

              Conditions in many parts of Cuba were unknown because communications
              were nearly completely knocked out, making it difficult even for the
              government to assess the damage.

              Michelle created an 18-foot storm surge on the island of Cayo Largo off
              Cuba's south coast Sunday, but there was no immediate word on damage
              there. In a state television broadcast Monday afternoon, Cuba's National
              Defense confirmed five deaths nationwide.

              Four people were killed in building collapses: a 32-year-old woman in
              Havana's Arroyo Grande neighborhood; a 39-year-old man in the provincial
              capital of Matanzas; and a 33-year-old man and a 98-year-old woman in
              Jaguey Grande, in Matanzas province. A 60-year-old man drowned in Playa
              Larga on the coast in Matanzas, where Michelle made landfall.

              President Fidel Castro toured several affected regions Monday and stopped
              at the home of Elian Gonzalez, the boy at the center of a highly politicized
              child custody battle last year involving the United States.

              Castro greeted the Gonzalez family at their home in Cardenas, in Matanzas
              province. Like hundreds of thousands of Cuban homes, it was without
              electricity and other basic services.

              As he toured other parts of Matanzas province and Villa Clara province to
              the east, Castro restated fears the storm damaged key crops including
              coffee, citrus and sugar.

              The hurricane ``surely has done damage to all agriculture,'' Castro said
              Sunday night. ``It's another blow ... but it would have been worse if it had
              passed over the capital.''

              Castro's communist government has not provided an estimate of economic
              damage from the storm, one of the most powerful to strike Cuba in decades.

              In Havana on Monday, residents were relieved to wake up and find the
              damage was not as bad as they had feared.

              Nimar Herrera Perez, 63, swept water off a sidewalk in front of her home,
              whose walls are three feet thick.

              ``These walls are good and strong,'' she said. ``You don't feel anything
              inside.''

              By Monday morning the rain had stopped across most of Cuba, but there
              were reports of heavy downpours in the easternmost provinces as Michelle
              moved northeast.

              In the Bahamas, the hurricane unleashed stinging winds and sheets of rain
              early Monday. More than 12 inches drenched Nassau between 7 a.m. EST
              Sunday and 2 p.m. Monday, said Basil Dean of the Bahamas Meteorological
              Office.

              ``We have a car outside that is underwater,'' said Jackie Albury, standing in
              knee-deep water in her house in Nassau, her pants rolled up and some
              boxes floating by. ``We have taken everything up to the second story.''

              A group of people was being evacuated from low-lying Cat Island, east of
              Nassau, the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association said.

              There were no reports of deaths in the Bahamas, but Michelle's winds ripped
              roofs off several wooden houses and tore down traffic lights. At the Nassau
              International Airport, some small planes were overturned and thrown across
              the tarmac.

              Power was out for most residents of Andros Island and the main island of
              New Providence. But by Monday afternoon, the storm had passed Nassau,
              and some children came out to play in flood waters 3 feet deep in some
              areas.

              Before moving on to the Bahamas, the hurricane's outer winds brushed
              Florida, where a tropical storm warning was lifted Monday afternoon for the
              Atlantic coast from the Upper Keys to the West Palm Beach area.

              In the Cayman Islands, Michelle whipped up storm surges that caused some
              damage to property along the western coast, the government said. It has not
              yet estimated the cost.