Hurricane Ike pounded northeastern Cuba with 120 mile per hour (195 kph) winds, torrential rains and massive waves that rolled through coastal towns on Monday on a path toward the Gulf of Mexico oil fields and possibly New Orleans.

State-run television showed angry waves slamming into the sea wall and surging as high as nearby five-story apartment buildings before flooding the streets of the city of Baracoa near the eastern tip of the communist-ruled island.

Ike, a dangerous Category 3 storm, had earlier ripped through the southern Bahamas and added to the misery and death toll in storm-battered Haiti. Officials said at least 61 people had died in floods in impoverished Haiti on top of 500 killed last week by Tropical Storm Hanna.

The Cuban Meteorology Institute said the storm crashed into the coast near Punta Lucrecia in the state of Holguin, about 510 miles (823 km) southeast of Havana.?There is a lot of worry, windows are beginning to break,? a woman named Carmela said by telephone from the hotel where she works in the city of Holguin, 30 miles (50 km) from Punta Lucrecia. ?There?s a lot of water, it?s raining very heavily.?

Officials said at least 1.1 million people were evacuated ahead of a storm expected to slash through the heart of Cuba, which is still reeling from Hurricane Gustav?s hard hit on the west side of the long, narrow island last week. After traversing Cuba, Ike is projected to enter the Gulf of Mexico, where 4,000 platforms produce 25 % of US oil and 15 percent of its natural gas, and point toward Louisiana and Texas.

Oil jumped $2 to near $109 a barrel yesterday, rebounding from a five-month low on worries that Ike would tear through the Gulf of Mexico, and on hopes that a US bailout of its top mortgage lenders would help temper a US economic downturn.

?Death toll could go higher?

Ike may threaten New Orleans, the city swamped in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,500 people and caused $80 billion in damage on the US Gulf Coast. Gustav narrowly missed New Orleans last Monday.

At 2 a.m. (0600 GMT) yesterday, Ike was just inland over northeastern Cuba, heading west near 14 mph (23 kph) with top winds approaching 120 mph (195 kph). Ike weakened slightly as it churned along Cuba?s 700-mile (1,125 km) length, hitting central Cuba yesterday and western Cuba today.

The storm is expected to regain strength when it re-emerges in the warm Gulf waters. Rainfall up to 20 inches (50.80 cm) was possible in Cuba, forecasters said. As Ike roared through the Caribbean, residents of the Florida Keys, a 110-mile (177-km) island chain connected by bridges with only one road out, were told to evacuate as a precaution.

Ike ripped off roofs and knocked over trees and power lines as it passed over Great Inagua, the Bahamas? southernmost island and Britain?s Turks and Caicos islands. No deaths were reported.

It hit Turks and Caicos as a Category 4 storm with 135 mph (215 kph) winds, damaging 80 % of the houses on Grand Turk, home to about 2,500 of the islands? 22,000 residents, government spokesman Courtney Robinson said.

Ike dumped more heavy rain on Haiti, where officials said 57 of the 61 victims on Sunday died in Cabaret, a town north of the capital, Port-au-Prince.?The whole village is flooded,? civil protection official Moise Jean-Pierre said. ?The death toll could go higher.?

Flooding from Tropical Storm Hanna last week was believed to have killed at least 500 people around the port city of Gonaives.

On Sunday, rain from Ike was causing the La Quinte river to rise again and floodwaters were seeping back into Gonaives, Mayor Stephen Moise said. All of the bridges linking the city to the rest of the country had collapsed. ?Gonaives is really a devastated and isolated city,? he said. ?We cannot bear another hurricane.?