Hurricane Ida was heading for the United States today after killing scores in El Salvador where it flattened entire villages over the weekend.

Holiday makers in Florida were on hurricane watch as the 105mph winds encroached and threat of flooding loomed.

The storm is also threatening oil installations as it moves across the Gulf of Mexico, sending the price of oil up.

New Orleans - where residents are still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina four years ago - is also on high alert as the storm makes its way towards the US coastline.

Southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are also in the Hurricane’s line of sight but there are no plans for evacuations as yet.

Ida could make landfall as early as tomorrow morning, although it was forecast to weaken by then.

It has already wreaked havoc in El Salvador where mud and boulders, loosened by heavy rains, swept down from a volcano and partly buried a small town, swallowing up homes as flooding and landslides across the country killed at least 124 people.

Hundreds of soldiers, police and residents dug through rock and debris in Verapaz looking for another 60 people missing from the mudslide, which struck before dawn while residents were still in their beds.

Matias Mendoza, 26, was at home with his wife Claudia and their year-old son, Franklin, when the earth began moving.

“It was about two in the morning when the rain started coming down harder, and the earth started shaking,” Mr Mendoza said. “I warned my wife and grabbed my son, and all of a sudden we heard a sound. The next thing I knew I was lying among parts of the walls of my house.”

“A few minutes later, I found my wife and my son in the middle of the rubble, and, thank God, we're alive.”

Almost 7,000 people were left homeless after their homes were damaged by landslides or cut off by floodwaters following three days of downpours from a low-pressure system indirectly related to Hurricane Ida, which brushed Mexico's Cancun resort on Sunday before steaming into the Gulf of Mexico.

President Mauricio Funes declared a national emergency and said that he would work with the United Nations to evaluate the extent of the damage. “The images that we have seen today are of a devastated country,” Mr Funes said. He called the damages incalculable.

One of the worst affected areas was in Verapaz, where mudslides covered cars and boulders two metres wide blocked streets.

The rain loosened a flow of mud and rocks that descended from the nearby Chichontepec volcano and buried homes and streets in Verapaz, a town of about 3,000 located 30 miles (50 kms) east of San Salvador, the capital.

Manuel Melendez, 61, who lived a few doors from Mr Mendoza, said: “It was terrible. The rocks came down on top of the houses and split them in two, and split the pavement. " His home was also destroyed. “I heard people screaming all around,” he said.

Interior Minister Humberto Centeno described the scene in Verapaz as “a real tragedy”.

Dave Roberts, a Navy hurricane specialist at the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami, said that Hurricane Ida's presence in the western Caribbean may have played a role in drawing a Pacific low-pressure system toward El Salvador, causing the rains. However, he added: “If there were deaths associated with this rainfall amount in El Salvador, I would not link it to Ida.”

Meanwhile, Hurricane Ida roared through the Gulf of Mexico towards the US with sustained winds of near 105 mph. Some energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico were evacuating workers from offshore platforms and several large producers shut down some oil and gas production as a precautionary measure.

The National Hurricane Centre issued warnings for the cities of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and east to Indian Pass and Florida, to expect hurricane conditions within the next 24 hours.

Hurricane Ida also swept past the Mexican resort of Cancun, doing little damage to the city, but causing small cliffs of sand on popular beaches from the strong winds which battered the shoreline.

About 1,000 people were evacuated from Mexico's Holbox Island, an isolated fishing community and sanctuary for thousands of flamingos and other exotic birds located northwest of Cancun.

Ida first became a hurricane on Thursday off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where heavy rains forced more than 5,000 people into shelters.

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