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Port-au-Prince: Tropical storm Fay roared toward Cuba on Sunday after lashing Haiti and the Dominican Republic with torrential rains and floods that killed at least four people.
Forecasters said Fay was expected to strengthen and could be hurricane strength when it passes over Cuba and zeros in on Florida, where officials declared a state of emergency.
A hurricane watch was issued for the Florida Keys and parts of south Florida on Sunday.
The US National Hurricane Centre in Miami said that yesterday morning local time the centre of the storm was about 715 kilometres southeast of Key West, Florida. It was moving toward the west-northwest with maximum sustained winds at 80 km/h.
In Cuba, officials in the eastern province of Santiago advised farmers to move livestock to higher ground and were preparing to evacuate tourists from low-lying coastal areas, the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported on its website.
Cuba's government said a hurricane watch was in effect for the island from the province of Matanzas east to Sancti Spiritus, and a tropical storm warning was in effect for Guantanamo Bay. Fay's path was expected to take it near the southern coast of the island yesterday and over western Cuba on Sunday night or Monday.
Swollen river
A man died on Sunday in Haiti while trying to cross a river in Leogane, south of Port-au-Prince, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, head of Haiti's civil protection department.
In neighbouring Dominican Republic, a 34-year-old woman drowned when her family tried to cross a swollen river in a car, civil defense agency director Luis Luna Paulino said.
The bodies of her missing 13-year-old niece and 5-year-old nephew were found on Sunday afternoon, but her husband swam to safety.
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