Hurricane Ivan crossed the western tip of Cuba overnight Monday, ripping roofs from homes, triggering mudslides, and cutting off at least two towns before pushing into the Gulf of Mexico on a path toward the United States.
The storm's eye made brief landfall near Cape San Antonio, 350 kilometers west of Havana. By Tuesday morning, the National Hurricane Center placed Ivan 135 kilometers northwest of Cuba and issued a hurricane watch for the northern Gulf coast. Forecasters projected landfall somewhere along a corridor stretching from Florida to Louisiana within days.
Ivan carried sustained winds of 260 kilometers per hour, placing it in the rare Category 5 tier. It would be only the fourth hurricane of that intensity to strike the United States since 1935.
Cuba's government relocated 1.6 million people to safer ground, the largest evacuation in the country's history. President Fidel Castro traveled to Pinar del Río to direct operations personally. No casualties were reported on the island, despite widespread property damage.
Ivan left a deadly trail across the wider Caribbean: at least 37 killed in Grenada, where up to 90 percent of buildings were damaged or destroyed; 21 in Jamaica; and additional fatalities in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Tobago. The regional death toll reached 71.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in September 2004, in its own words.