Hurricane Jeanne lashed the Bahamas with violent winds and torrential rains today, making a direct hit on Abaco island and threatening the country’s second largest city of Freeport while hundreds of people took refuge in emergency shelters.

Hundreds of people fled their homes and took refuge in shelters set up in schools and churches today as Hurricane Jeanne bore down on the Bahamas with 100mph winds and torrential rains, threatening more destruction to an island chain still recovering from Hurricane Frances.

WITH Florida firmly in its sights, Hurricane Jeanne bore down on the Bahamas with violent winds and drenching rains last night threatening more destruction on islands still recovering from Hurricane Frances.

A revitalised Hurricane Jeanne was tonight on a path for the Bahamas and then on to the Atlantic coast of Florida, a state still reeling from three earlier storms.

Trucks dumped scores of bodies into a mass grave in a flood-ravaged Haitian city as officials said the death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne rose to more than 1,070 and could double again.

Bodies remained in the streets and in growing piles outside morgues in a Haitian city that has been devastated by floods that have torn apart families and left hungry crowds mobbing truckloads of aid.

Bloated bodies and weeping relatives filled mortuaries today as Tropical Storm Jeanne killed more than 570 Haitians with the toll expected to rise.

Tropical Storm Jeanne brought raging floodwaters to Haiti, killing at least 90 people and leaving dozens of Haitian families huddled on rooftops as the storm pushed further out into the open seas, officials said.

Hurricane Ivan has spun off deadly tornadoes, swamped streets in storm-weary Florida and battered the Alabama coast, drenching other south-eastern states with heavy rains and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands.

Twenty-two people lay dead and hundreds of homes were in ruins today in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.

Hurricane Ivan slammed ashore in the US early today with winds of 130 mph, packing deadly tornadoes and a powerful punch of waves and rain that threatened to swamp communities from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

More than 1.2 million people in metropolitan New Orleans were warned to get out as 140-mph Hurricane Ivan churned toward the Gulf Coast, threatening to submerge the below-sea-level city in what could be the most disastrous storm to hit in nearly 40 years.