Hurricane Ike roars across Cuba

Camaguey, Cuba: Hurricane Ike's winds and massive storm surge ripped apart houses and toppled trees on Monday as the deadly storm roared across Cuba toward Havana and its historic but decaying old buildings.

Forecasters said it could enter the Gulf of Mexico next, with Louisiana among the likely targets.

More than 770,000 Cubans evacuated to shelters or higher ground ahead of the Category 3 hurricane, which earlier raked the Bahamas and worsened floods in Haiti that have already killed at least 319 people.

"We are preparing for a strong hit," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage told state television.

On Florida's Key West, tourists and residents alike were ordered to evacuate ahead of Ike's expected arrival on Tuesday and a steady stream of traffic filled the highway from the island. Ike was forecast to make landfall later in the week between the Florida Panhandle and the Texas coast - with New Orleans once again in the crosshairs.

The hurricane also slowed efforts to bring oil and gas production back online in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Gustav.

Ike first slammed into the Turks and Caicos and the southernmost Bahamas islands as a Category 4 hurricane, but thousands rode out the storm in shelters and there was no immediate word of deaths on the low-lying islands.

It made landfall in eastern Cuba late Sunday night, said meteorologist Todd Kimberlain at the US National Hurricane Centre, and was forecast to hit Havana, the capital of 2 million people, before it moves into the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday morning.

Coastal homes

By 5am EDT [0900 GMT], Ike had weakened to a Category 2 storm with top sustained winds near 105 mph [168 kph] and forecasters expected further weakening as it moved over central Cuba on Monday. It was centred about 40 miles east-southeast of Camaguey, Cuba, and moving west near 15 mph [24 kph].

State television broadcast images of the storm surge washing over coastal homes in the easternmost city of Baracoa and reported that dozens of dwellings were damaged beyond repair. Former President Fidel Castro released a written statement calling on Cubans to heed security measures to ensure no one dies.

Foreign tourists were pulled out from vulnerable beach resorts, workers rushed to protect coffee plants and other crops, and plans were under way to distribute food and cooking oil to disaster areas.