Hurricane Ike slams into Cuba

Hurricane Ike weakened into a Category 2 storm today after roaring ashore in northeastern Cuba as a dangerous Category 3 hurricane, the US National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters have said Ike could weaken to a Category 1 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale over Cuba but regain Category 3 strength as it nears the Gulf of Mexico, where 4,000 platforms produce 25 per cent of US oil and 15 per cent of its natural gas. Hurricane Ike is the second major storm to hit the island in a little over a week, weather officials said. Just hours before, hundreds of thousands of panicked Cubans fled the fury of the advancing hurricane, the latest of several major storms to sow misery and destruction through the flood-stricken Caribbean in recent weeks.

The head of the island's meteorological service, Jose Rubiera, told television that the outer wall of the eye of the hurricane made landfall at the eastern Cuban town of Punta Lucrecia. Lashing the Atlantic with torrential rain and howling winds, Ike has already killed dozens in Haiti, deepening the impoverished country's humanitarian disaster. Packing 120 kph winds, Ike is the second powerful storm in just eight days to strike Cuba, following the devastation of Hurricane Gustav.

"In all of Cuba's history, we have never had two hurricanes this close together," Mr Rubeira said. More than 800,000 Cubans were evacuated ahead of Ike's arrival, including more than 9,000 foreign visitors who were moved out of the tourist spot of Varadero, some 120km east of Havana. Officials in Haiti continued aid operations in the flood-stricken town of Gonaives, devastated by flooding from Tropical Storm Hanna.

Forty-seven people perished in the Haitian village of Cabaret, near Port-au-Prince, in flooding caused by Ike, officials said yesterday. The humanitarian crisis has deepened after four storms in three weeks left at least 600 people dead and hundreds of thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter. Hundreds of bodies were found in flood-prone Gonaives, a town of 350,000 in northwestern Haiti, after a five-metre wall of water and mud engulfed much of the town.

UN peacekeepers on Saturday evacuated several thousand residents from Gonaives, a local official said, but thousands more are still awaiting relief. Some 650,000 Haitians have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to UNICEF. Officials said 200,000 people have been without food and clean water, many for four days.

*AFP