MIAMI — Hurricane Ike ripped through central Cuba on Monday, toppling colonial landmarks and forcing the evacuation of nearly 1 million people -- with more likely to be displaced as the powerful storm plowed toward populous Havana.
Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro proclaimed his country on "combat alert" against the third massive storm to hit the island in as many weeks and what he portrayed as a heartless double standard that blocks U.S. humanitarian aid.
The extent of Ike's damage elsewhere in the Caribbean also emerged Monday, a day after it ravaged the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas as a Category 4 hurricane with winds upward of 135 mph and triggered more flooding in devastated Haiti, where the death toll from the series of storms was reported to exceed 1,000.
In the important Cuban farming and mining areas near Camaguey, news agencies reported that the ferocious winds toppled buildings, including colonial columns that graced the city, a UNESCO-designated historical site.
Exiting into the Caribbean Sea at midday, Ike slowed to about 12 mph, and the National Hurricane Center reported its sustained winds had subsided to about 80 mph. But the Miami-based center warned that the storm was likely to regain intensity overnight as it moved across the warm waters off Cuba's southern coast.
Forecasters feared Ike might hit Havana today with winds exceeding 100 mph.
"It will have a very powerful fuel there," Jose Rubiera, head of Cuba's Meteorological Institute, warned on state television after Ike crossed into the shallow mangrove-studded waters of the Gulf of Ana Maria.
Haiti's consul general for South Florida, Ralph Latortue, reported an even more dire state in his homeland than was apparent from the TV images showing bloated, mud-covered bodies stacking up at makeshift morgues along the flooded west coast. More than 1,000 people have been killed over the last month, 14,000 homes have been destroyed and 5 million people are without food or shelter, he told journalists in Miami.
The U.S. Navy sent its amphibious assault ship Kearsarge to Port-au-Prince to assist in ferrying disaster relief to victims cut off by collapsed bridges and flooded towns along the sole road to stricken areas north of the capital. In contrast to the $100,000 in assistance offered Cuba, Washington gave Haitian storm victims $10 million.
