"Data from an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft indicate that Gustav continues to rapidly strengthen and now has maximum winds 115 miles (185 kilometres) per hour with higher gusts," the US National Hurricane Center said.

That made Gustav "a dangerous category three hurricane" on the five-notch Saffir-Simpson scale -- equal in strength to Hurricane Katrina when it made landfall in the southern United States three years ago.

Cuba's western province of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth in the south were put on the highest level of weather alert.

Tens of thousands of residents were asked to leave their homes in advance of Gustav, which was forecast to hit Cuba later Saturday.

"It will produce a storm surge and torrential rains in the western part of the country," warned Cuban meteorologist Jose Rubiera.

Gustav brushed past the Cayman Islands late Friday, with no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Barreling earlier across Jamaica, however, it killed at least 11 people. In Haiti, it left 66 dead plus 10 missing. In the neighboring Dominican Republic, the death toll stood at eight.

At dawn Saturday, the center of Gustav was located about 410 kilometers (255 miles) east-southeast of the western tip of Cuba, the National Hurricane Center, based in Miami, reported.

It was moving northwest at around 19 kilometers (12 miles) per hour. If it keeps its present course, the center said, it could hit Louisiana -- the same state hard hit by Katrina -- in the early hours of Tuesday.

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding told reporters Friday that the storm had displaced between 3,500 and 4,000 people in his Caribbean island nation.

"I am concerned that there are still a number of persons who are still unaccounted for," Golding said.

Streets in the normally bustling capital Kingston were soaked and reeking with the stench from overflowing sewers. Powerful gusts sent metal roofs flying and threatened to wreak havoc on banana production.

Although the heaviest of the rains had subsided, many Jamaicans worried about returning home. "It is all wet and I am afraid to sleep inside there," said Kingston housewife Charlene Markland.

In Cuba, a fragile and aging housing stock is highly vulnerable to hurricanes. More than two million people live in the capital Havana, where many colonial-era buildings, crowded with families, are prone to cave-ins.

Anxiety meanwhile grew on the American side of the Gulf of Mexico.

In New Orleans, officials began busing out residents on a voluntary basis in anticipation of Gustav, and considered mandatory evacuations to prevent a repeat of the devastation and deaths of 2005.

President George W. Bush declared Friday a state of emergency in Louisiana and Texas -- enhancing their access to federal disaster relief coordination and funding.

Katrina killed around 1,800 people, mostly in the New Orleans area, as it made landfall on August 29, 2005 as a category three hurricane, after reaching category five over the Gulf of Mexico.

Three major oil producers -- BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell -- on Thursday evacuated workers from their facilities in the gulf where nearly a quarter of US crude oil installations

PHOTO CAPTION:

Hurricane Gustav

 AFP