Havana/Port-au-Prince, Haiti - The whole of Cuba was in a state of emergency as Hurricane Ike looked likely to batter Havana Tuesday as well as western sections of the island after already leaving four dead.

More than 24 hours after making landfall Sunday night at Cabo Lucrecia in the east, Ike continued to lash the Caribbean island with sustained winds of 130 kilometres per hour.

On Monday night, Cuban television reported that at least four people had died in accidents caused by Ike. Rescue officials were bracing for higher death tolls as rain continued across the Caribbean.

Authorities have evacuated nearly one-tenth of the population to safer buildings and areas away from surging ocean tides.

In coastal Holguin province Monday night, trees were blown down, roofs blown off and electrical poles knocked down across roads, television reports said.

Ike had already left 72 dead in Haiti, bringing the poverty-stricken country's death toll to 300 from four tropical storms and hurricanes this season.

Ike, which had weakened to a category one hurricane on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale as it travelled overland through Cuba, was veering in a more westerly direction and was expected to cross western Cuba Tuesday, heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, said the National Weather Center in Miami, Florida.

After it leaves Cuba, the storm was forecast to strengthen and cast a possible trajectory cone sweeping from eastern Louisiana to the Texas coast and down into Mexico over the coming days.

Florida's coastal areas breathed a sigh of relief as the storm changed course, and evacuees and tourists returned to the Florida Keys.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lowell formed on the Pacific coast of Mexico with sustained winds of 85 kilometres per hour and higher gusts.

Cuban authorities, who have evacuated 1.6 million people to safety, extended the "cyclone alarm" to include the western provinces of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth, which were devastated by Hurricane Gustav a week earlier.

Cuban authorities called upon people in Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth to suspend reconstruction work on damage caused by Gustav in the face of the approaching wallop from Ike. Gustav hit the area with sustained winds of 220 kilometres per hour, causing damage and destruction to more than 100,000 homes and devastating infrastructure - including the electricity network - and agriculture.

While Cuba deployed soldiers to clear debris from storm sewers and the government ran an efficient evacuation, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, Haiti, was still reeling from dozens of deaths still being counted two days after Ike crashed onto its shores. The prospect of hunger loomed after Ike nearly destroyed the country's agricultural sector.

Thomas Joseph Wills, mayor of the hard-hit city of Cabaret, said Monday that 59 bodies had been found in his town alone, including 18 children, after Ike's torrential rains caused the Bretelle River to breach its banks and flood the entire city.

Another 15 people were missing in the city of 70,000 about 30 kilometres north-west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Fifty people were also injured in flooding caused by Ike.

Wills noted that four other people died in the village of Arcahaie and nine others in Casale while a large part of the population in the area remained isolated by floodwaters and had no access to food or water.

On its way to Cuba, Ike also swept destruction across the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

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. (dpa)