Worst Storm in 48 Years Batters Caribbean Islands

Hurricane Ike was closing in on Cuba and the Bahamas last night after shredding 80% of homes on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos, causing fresh misery for a region battered by tropical storms.

Ike, a category 4 storm with winds of up to 135mph, blew off hundreds of roofs and wrecked scores of fishing boats in Turks and Caicos, a British overseas territory.

Thousands of tourists fled the archipelago before the near-direct hit and residents who stayed hunkered down "just holding on for life", said Michael Misick, the chief minister. "They got hit really, really bad. A lot of people have lost their houses, and we will have to see what we can do to accommodate them."

There were no immediate reports of casualties but the territory would need urgent aid, said Clive Evans, of the British Red Cross. "These islands have not seen storms like this for 48 years."

The Ministry of defense confirmed that the navy frigate HMS Iron Duke and support vessel Wave Ruler were on their way to the area to offer disaster relief. The ships had only recently finished offering support in the Cayman Islands, hit by Hurricane Gustav a week ago.

Cuba and the south-eastern islands of the Bahamas were braced for devastation as the hurricane moved towards them.

The path of the storm remained difficult to forecast, according to specialists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Several computer projections have Ike restrengthening into a major hurricane and menacing the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines along the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the week.

Many residents there are still returning after fleeing Gustav, a storm that failed to deliver the punch it once threatened.

"Our citizens are weary and tired and have spent a lot of money evacuating from Gustav," said Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans.

"My expectation this time is it will be very difficult to move the kind of numbers out of this city that we moved during Gustav."

Although the threat to Florida Keys appeared to recede, a phased evacuation for residents was carried out yesterday.

Other projections turned Ike west in the Gulf of Mexico towards the Texas-Mexico border, highlighting the lack of confidence in longer-term forecasts.

"It is much too early to anticipate which areas along the Gulf coast could be impacted," said Jamie Rhome, a senior forecaster at the NHC.

Residents in Havana stocked up on candles and tinned food and the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, on the island's eastern tip, closed beaches and banned cars from roads. The cells holding terrorism suspects were hurricane-proof, said military officials.

Last week's storm wreaked billions of dollars of damage on Cuban agriculture and homes, prompting Fidel Castro, the former president, to compare the impact to a nuclear bomb.

Haiti was expected to escape Ike's brunt but remained vulnerable to flooding because rivers were swollen from last week's tropical storm Hanna, which submerged crops and infrastructure and cut off 250,000 people in and around the port of Gonaives.

The confirmed death toll of 167 people was expected to climb. But police denied a report that more than 500 had died.

"We are very concerned about Ike," Holly Inurreta, of the aid agency Catholic Relief Services, told Associated Press. "Any bit more of rain and Gonaives will be cut off again."

People were moving to high ground and seeking rations to stockpile, not an easy task for impoverished families that lost nearly everything last week.

A trickle of aid in the form of drinking water and high-energy biscuits has not eased the desperation. "What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth," a UN envoy, Hedi Annabi, said after touring Gonaives on Saturday.