A hurricane pounded Jamaica with heavy rain as it headed for landfall today while airports closed, cruise ships steered clear and police ordered curfews to deter looting as the late-season storm neared Jamaica’s south coast.

Jamaican security forces kicked down doors and arrested dozens of people in a bullet-strewn slum and said the death toll from four days of fighting sparked by the search for a reputed drug lord had risen to 73.

A Jamaican-born Muslim cleric who was jailed in Britain for inciting murder and racial hatred will be allowed into the Caribbean island because he has committed no crimes there, the government said today.