Hurricane Dennis menacing Caribbean

Ten-foot waves crashed ashore in Jamaica and hundreds of islanders fled flooded homes for shelters today as Hurricane Dennis lashed Caribbean coastlines with winds whipped up to 110 mph.

The first hurricane of the season threatened to get even stronger as it made a beeline for Cuba and then landfall in the Gulf of Mexico projected on Sunday or Monday.

The hurricane raised fears that oil supplies will be disrupted by the fourth storm in as many weeks.

Thunderstorms covered all of the Dominican Republic and southern Haiti.

The Cayman Islands were also under hurricane warnings, including the US detention camp holding some 520 terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay.

The Florida Keys went on hurricane watch today and ordered tourists to evacuate, and the southern Florida peninsula was on tropical storm watch, expecting stormy conditions within 36 hours.

Rivers burst their banks in dangerously deforested Haiti, where wind gusts uprooted a palm tree and flung it into a mud hut, injuring two people who were hospitalised in southern Les Cayes town.

In Jamaica, where a man narrowly escaped from a car swept away by floodwaters on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Percival Patterson urged people in low-lying areas to evacuate.

Forecasters at the US Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm could strike the US anywhere from Florida to Louisiana on Sunday or Monday.

Private forecaster AccuWeather put the storm right into US Gulf of Mexico oil and gas producing facilities.