Ike tears through Cuba, heading for Havana (Roundup)

Sep 8, 2008, 19:13 GMT

A handout picture provided by Solovision shows the floods in Baracoa, Cuba, 07 September 2008, after hurricane Ike hit the island\'s northeastern coast. EPA/SOLVISION

Havana/Miami - Hurricane Ike was battering the Camaguey province in central Cuba Monday as it became slightly weaker, with sustained winds of 160 kilometres per hour and higher gusts.

At 1500 GMT, the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) projected that the storm would move over water again after Camaguey, where it could pick up strength before hitting Cuba's land mass again.

'Ike should then move along or just south of the southern coast of central Cuba today (Monday), move over western Cuba Tuesday and emerge into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday night,' the NHC said.

Earlier Monday, the hurricane tore through eastern Cuba, driving waves as high as 15 metres ashore and destroying dozens of homes. Weather officials have reduced its threat from category 3 over the weekend to category 2 on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.

On its way to Cuba, Ike swept destruction across Haiti, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic over the past days. Hundreds have been killed on poverty-stricken Haiti by the succession of three storms within nine days - Gustav, Hanna and Ike.

Cuba has reported no loss of life, surviving the three storms with massive evacuations that reached 1 million before Ike made landfall about 10 pm Sunday (0200 GMT Monday) near Punta Lucrecia in Holguin province, some 770 kilometres east of Havana, the Cuban weather service said.

Ike delivered severe damage to homes and other buildings on Cuba, uprooted trees from water-logged earth and played havoc with the electrical and communications infrastructure.

Camaguey alone evacuated over 260,000 people, some 29 per cent of its total population. The Provincial Defence Council president Julio Cesar Garcia said the area was in a 'difficult situation.'

As Havana braced for Ike, officials worried the hurricane could have a 'domino effect' on buildings already weakend by Hurricane Gustav just nine days ago.

The Government of Cuba has issued a tropical storm warning for the western provinces of Havana, Havana City, Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth, according to NHC.

In Haiti, at least 47 people died in the storm, drowning in the city of Cabaret, the Haiti Press news agency reported. Ike's torrential rains caused the Bretelle River to breach its banks and flood the entire city 35 kilometres north of Port-au-Prince.

Ike was the latest storm to hit the poverty-stricken country since mid-August. It brought the number of dead in Haiti to 323 from Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike.

In the Turks and Caicos, 80 per cent of the homes were reported damaged or destroyed by Ike, but the 38,000 residents of the string of 30 islands were brought to safety.

Rescue officials were bracing for higher death tolls as the rain continued across the Caribbean.

Florida was bracing for a somewhat weakened Ike, which could hit the Keys and the Dry Tortugas as a tropical storm or hurricane, weather forecasters said. The state has been declared a disaster area in advance to free up deployment of the National Guard when the storm hits.

Cuba over the weekend asked the US government to suspend its decades-old embargo on exports of desperately needed material for recovery and protection of human life. But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a resounding 'no' to the request on Sunday.