With the storm possibly expanding into a full-blown hurricane, officials throughout the Bahamas archipelago issued emergency warnings and readied hurricane shelters.

In the northern tourism hub of Freeport, residents feverishly jammed into stores for last-minute supplies.

US emergency officials, still occupied with the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav which swept into Louisiana Monday, were preparing for Hanna to hit as a hurricane on the Atlantic coast this week.

The third deadly tropical storm in three weeks to batter the northeast Caribbean, Hanna stood still much of Tuesday delivering sheets of rain and blasting winds to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and leaving Haiti's third largest city, Gonaives, north of Port-au-Prince, under water and pleading for aid.

"The situation in Gonaives is extremely urgent. I appeal for help," said mayor Stephen Moise.

"Practically the whole city is flooded, there is water everywhere. The water is rising in some areas to more than two meters (six feet)," Moise told AFP by telephone.

In the United States, there was relief at the limited damage caused by Gustav after some two million people evacuated the northern Gulf of Mexico coastline ahead of the storm's landfall Monday.

But federal emergency officials were turning their attention to Hanna, which the US National Hurricane Center forecast would strengthen into a hurricane-force storm and head northward over the Bahamas to the US coastline near the Florida-Georgia border.

And all in the region had their eyes on two more tropical storms that formed in the mid and eastern Atlantic, Ike and Josephine, with Ike appearing likely to follow the path of Hanna.

At 0600 GMT, the center of Hanna was hovering just east of Ile de la Tortue in Haiti, 130 kilometers (80 miles) southeast of Great Inagua island in the southeastern Bahamas, with maximum sustained winds of 100 kilometers (60 miles) per hour, the National Hurricane Center said.

The NHC said the storm would pick up speed and probably begin moving to the northwest Wednesday, putting it on a direct track to Nassau Thursday afternoon and then Grand Bahama island.

It warned that the storm could intensify to hurricane strength as it moved toward the two major tourism hubs, driving large waves and coastal flooding of up to 1.5 meters (five feet).

The government of the Bahamas issued a hurricane watch for northwestern islands, with hurricane conditions possible within the warning area over the next 36 hours.

In Freeport on Grand Bahamas, tourists were clearing out with the Westin Hotel reporting a 20 percent occupancy rate.

In Haiti, Gonaives residents reached by telephone Tuesday said floodwaters had reached the ceilings of some homes, forcing inhabitants to seek safety on the roof.

"I have seen about 10 bodies floating in the flooded streets of the city," Ernst Dorfeuille of the Gonaives police told AFP by phone.

Moise, the mayor, called the situation extremely critical. "The toll is only preliminary, because it is impossible to enter the city at the moment," he said.

"I don't know how long we will stay alive," said a clearly panicked father, Germain Michelet. "If we have to go another night in these conditions, there will not be a lot of survivors."

The latest devastation came as Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, were still reeling from Hurricane Gustav.

Gustav killed 77 people and left eight others missing in Haiti, and another eight dead in the Dominican Republic.

And only two weeks ago Tropical Storm Fay sparked flooding in Haiti that left about 40 people dead.

In the United States, strong winds from Hanna forced the US space agency to hold off moving the space shuttle Atlantis to its launch pad in Florida. The move might take place as soon as Thursday, NASA said.

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