Ike slams Cuba, Haiti death toll passes 600

A man observes a flooded street at the Saint Marc City some 96km north of Port Au Prince on Sunday. With severe flooding, hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands lacking food and basic amenities, Haiti has been hit badly so far this hurricane season, with four severe storms in less than four weeks.Photo: AFP

Hurricane Ike raged over Cuba early Monday, pummelling the island with gale force winds and torrential rain after killing dozens in beleaguered Haiti and worsening its growing humanitarian disaster.
The second hurricane to strike in less than a week prompted more than 800,000 people to evacuate coastal areas of eastern Cuba. More than 9,000 foreign tourists were moved out of the resort of Varadero.
The hurricane made landfall at Punta Lucrecia late Sunday, the head of Cuba's meteorological service, Jose Rubiera, told state television.
Packing 120-mile (195-kilometer) per hour winds, Ike is the second powerful storm in just eight days to strike Cuba, following Hurricane Gustav.
"In all of Cuba's history, we have never had two hurricanes this close together," lamented Rubeira.
Just before dawn, the eye of storm was practically over Cabo Lucrecia on the northern coast of eastern Cuba, about 220km east of Camaguey and moving west, according to the US National Hurricane Centre which said it was a Category Three storm on a scale going up to five.
Ike ploughed across the Turks and Caicos as a powerful Category Four storm late Saturday, causing injuries and extensive damage on the British territory and tourist haven, before weakening.
The hurricane raked the Bahamas island of Great Inagua, toppling trees, blowing off roofs, causing an island-wide power failure and forcing many of its 1,000 to seek emergency refuges.
The main concern is now in Haiti, where four storms in three weeks have killed at least 600 people and left hundreds of thousands in desperate need of food, cleanwater and shelter.