Hurricane Dean batters Jamaica, heads toward Mexico

KINGSTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) Hurricane Dean buffeted Jamaica's southern coast, flooding the capital and littering it with broken trees and roofs after killing nine people earlier on its run through the Caribbean.

Dean was an ''extremely dangerous'' Category 4 hurricane, the second-highest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. It could gain even more strength today to become a potentially catastrophic Category 5 as it passes south of the Cayman Islands and heads for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller declared a month-long state of emergency and called a cabinet meeting to discuss the potential impact on August 27 general elections.

The power company switched off electricity as the wind began to howl and pounding waves battered the southern coast.

Police said they shot and wounded two men caught trying to break into a business in the capital during the storm.

Torrents of rain pelted the capital Kingston and streets were blocked by toppled trees, utility poles and broken roofs.

A man was missing after falling trees tore into his house.

The eye of the storm stayed just south of Jamaica but the intense wall of winds around the calm center pummeled the island.

''They're still getting pretty beaten up,'' hurricane center forecaster Dave Roberts said. ''I know they were massively flooded from the reports that we had.'' Mudslides were reported in several parts of the mountainous country of 3 million people.

Local media reported 17 fishermen and women had been stranded ahead of the storm on the Pedro Cays, a small island chain south of Kingston, directly in the path of the hurricane.

The government urged residents to go to shelters. But many people, including those in one low-lying seaport town close to Kingston, refused to flee.

''We are going nowhere,'' Byron Thompson said in the former buccaneer town of Port Royal, settled by pirate Henry Morgan in the 17th century. ''In fact, if you come by here later today you will see me drinking rum over in that bar with some friends.'' Dean packed sustained winds of 145 miles per hour (230 kph) and its eye was about 215 km west-southwest of Kingston at 11 p m EDT (0830 hrs today).

HEADED FOR MEXICO Storm warnings were also in effect for the Caymans and parts of Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and Belize. The latest computer tracking models forecast Dean would spare the US Gulf Coast but slam into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, cross the Bay of Campeche and then hit central Mexico.

Thousands of frightened tourists on Mexico's Caribbean coast stood in line for hours at airports to flee before Dean's expected arrival.

Four people were killed in Haiti, where landslides destroyed several hundred houses, according to the UN Office for the oordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

It said that brought to at least nine the number killed by Dean since it roared into the Caribbean as the first hurricane of what is expected to be an active 2007 Atlantic season.

Risk modeling company EQECAT Inc estimated insured losses from Dean's rampage through the Caribbean islands at 1.5 billion dollar to 3 billion dollar, most of it in Jamaica.

Dean was moving west at 20 mph (32 kph) and was being watched closely by energy markets, which have been nervous since a series of storms in 2004 and 2005 toppled Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, flooded refineries and cut pipelines.

Mexico's Pemex oil company began evacuating 13,360 workers from its Gulf rigs.

The US space shuttle Endeavour hastily left the orbiting International Space Station so it can land a day early in case the storm forces NASA to evacuate its Houston center.

Category 5 hurricanes are rare but in 2005 there were four, including Katrina, reinforcing research that suggests global warming may increase the strength of tropical cyclones.

REUTERS SW KP1043>