CUBA

Hurricane Sandy makes landfall

Hurricane Sandy made landfall Thursday just west of Santiago de Cuba in southern Cuba, where residents boarded over windows and cleared drainage gutters ahead of the strengthening storm that had roared across Jamaica and left two dead in the Caribbean.

The US National Hurricane Center said the storm hit Cuba with maximum sustained winds of 183 kph. The Miami center said that Sandy, which had strengthened to a category 2 hurricane, was located just inland over southeastern Cuba and moving north, northeast at 24 kph, and is expected to remain a hurricane as it moves through the Bahamas.

The 18th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was expected to pass to the west of the US naval base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, where pretrial hearings were being held for a suspect in the deadly 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole off Yemen. The military warned the 5,500 people living on the US base to be ready for the storm. Officials said there was no threat to the 166 prisoners.

The hurricane center said after Cuba, Sandy would pass over the Bahamas. It might bring tropical storm conditions along the southeastern Florida coast, the Upper Keys and Florida Bay by Friday morning.

Cuba’s Communist government, known for its quick response to natural disasters, announced the evacuation of about 450 tourists from beach resorts near Santiago,