Nearly one million people in Cuba have fled their homes as Hurricane Ike roars across the island, tearing off roofs and sending waves crashing into buildings.

More than 9,000 tourists have been evacuated from holiday resorts, and residents in the island's capital, Havana, have been warned that the eye of the storm may score a direct hit, endangering thousands of the city's decaying historic buildings.

Ike made landfall in eastern Cuba as a Category-3 hurricane late last night, after devastating Grand Turk in the Bahamas and worsening floods in Haiti that have already killed 319 people.

The storm is forecast to cross almost the entire length of the island, before entering the Gulf of Mexico, with New Orleans once again among the likely targets as it makes landfall on the US mainland. It has weakened slightly to a Category-2 storm but its destructive power is still fearsome.

“We are preparing for a strong hit,” said Carlos Lage, the Cuban Vice-President, on state television.

Former President Fidel Castro has released a statement calling on Cubans to heed security measures to ensure no one dies. Cuba has a successful record of carrying out mass evacuations before hurricanes, sparing countless lives.

Scant and sporadic reports from six of the eight eastern provinces affected indicate that at least 900,000 people have evacuated, out of a total Cuban population of 11 million.

Cuba’s National Meteorological Institute said that heavy rains were soaking the eastern half of the island, and dangerous storm surges were threatening communities along most of the northeastern coast.

As Ike hit the easternmost city of Baracoa its storm surge sent huge waves crashing over buildings as tall as five stories, and dozens of homes were damaged beyond repair.

The hurricane moved on towards the centre of the island at a speed of about 14mph (22kph), its powerful winds sending debris flying over the streets of Camaguey as the storm's eye passed just 20 miles (35 km) to the north of the provincial capital at 8am (1200 GMT).

Diagonal sheets of rain flooded the narrow colonial streets, already clogged with large tree branches and metal grates. A huge sheet of plastic roofing spun in the wind over a traffic intersection.

The streets were however deserted, save for a miserable-looking security guard sheltering at a bus station, as the town was already prepared. Banks and restaurants had been boarded up by municipal workers hours earlier, before heavy rain started falling, and bread had been handed out from the many government bakeries around town to disorderly queues of families hoarding supplies.

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