Tropical Storm Hanna left at least 19 dead in Haiti as it turned its heavy winds and rains on the Bahamas and threatened to head toward the southeastern US coastline.

With the storm threatening to strengthen into a full-blown hurricane, officials throughout the Bahamas archipelago issued emergency warnings and prepared to activate hurricane shelters, and residents in the northern tourism hub of Freeport feverishly jammed into stores for last-minute supplies.

In the US, emergency officials still occupied with the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav which swept into Louisiana on Monday began weighing the likelihood that a new hurricane could strike the Atlantic coast this week.

Extremely urgent situation

The third deadly tropical storm in three weeks to batter the northeast Caribbean, Hanna stood still much of Tuesday delivering sheets of rain and blasting winds to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and leaving Haiti's third largest city, Gonaives, under water.

"The situation in Gonaives is extremely urgent. I appeal for help," said Stephen Moise, mayor of the city of 300 000, 152 kilometres north of Port-au-Prince.

"Practically the whole city is flooded, there is water everywhere. The water is rising in some areas to more than two metres," Moise told AFP by telephone.

In the United States officials and some two million people who had evacuated the northern Gulf of Mexico coastline ahead of Hurricane Gustav's landfall on Monday breathed a sigh of relief at the limited destruction that ensued.

But federal emergency officials were already turning their attention to Hanna northeast of Haiti, which the US National Hurricane Center forecast would strengthen into a hurricane-force storm and head northward over the Bahamas to the US coastline near the Florida-Georgia border.

Two more tropical storms

And all in the region had their eyes on two more tropical storms that formed in the mid- and eastern Atlantic, Ike and Josephine, with Ike appearing likely to head right to where Hanna sits now by the weekend.

At 0000 GMT Hanna was barely moving about 105 kilometres southeast of Great Inagua island in the southeastern Bahamas and about 725 kilometres southeast of Nassau.

The NHC said the storm would probably begin moving to the northwest early on Wednesday, putting it on a direct track to Nassau on Thursday afternoon and then Grand Bahama island. It warned that the storm could intensify to hurricane strength as it moved toward the two major tourism hubs, driving large waves and coastal flooding of up to 1.5 metres.

In Freeport on Grand Bahamas, tourists were clearing out with the Westin Hotel reporting a 20 percent occupancy rate.

Businesses were putting up their storm shutters and Discovery Cruise Lines, which operates a popular day cruise to and from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, indicated they will sail for the last time on Tuesday night and remain in port until further notice.

Gonaives residents reached by telephone on Tuesday said floodwaters had reached the ceilings of some homes, forcing inhabitants to seek safety on the roof.

Bodies in the streets

"I have seen about 10 bodies floating in the flooded streets of the city," Ernst Dorfeuille of the Gonaives police told AFP by phone.

Moise, the mayor, called the situation extremely critical. "The toll is only preliminary, because it is impossible to enter the city at the moment," he said.

"I don't know how long we will stay alive," a clearly panicked father, Germain Michelet, told AFP. "If we have to go another night in these conditions, there will not be a lot of survivors."

The latest devastation came as Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, were still reeling from Hurricane Gustav.

Gustav killed 77 people and left eight others missing in Haiti, and another eight dead in the Dominican Republic.

And only two weeks ago Tropical Storm Fay sparked flooding in Haiti that left about 40 people dead.

AFP