CANCUN (Mexico), Aug 21: Hurricane Dean, which slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico on Tuesday, was downgraded from a powerful category five to a still-dangerous category three hurricane, the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre announced.

Dean hit the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula near the town of Costa Maya around 3:30 am (0830 GMT) with sustained winds of 270 kilometres per hour with higher gusts.

But just before 7:00 am (1200 GMT) the center reported that Dean’s maximum sustained winds had dropped to near 205 kilometres per hour, with higher gusts.

Tourist resorts were abandoned and most residents had fled for safer ground by the time the outer bands of the storm began bearing down late Monday with heavy rains and high winds.

State-run Petroleos de Mexico (PEMEX) said it had evacuated and shut down all its offshore oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico.

At 1200 GMT Dean’s centre was located over the Yucatan peninsula about 220 kilometers (135 miles) east-southeast of the city of Campeche.

The hurricane was moving in a west-northwest direction near 32 kilometres per hour. “On the forecast track, the center will reach the southern bay of Campeche late (Tuesday) afternoon,” the Hurricane Centre reported.

Forecasters however warned that Dean could regain strength as it barrels over the warm Gulf of Mexico waters on the way to a second landfall later on Wednesday in northern Mexico.A total curfew was declared in the state capital Chetumal, population 450,000, where electricity was cut off and main roads were closed, a correspondent said.

Authorities nonetheless heaved a sigh of relief as forecasters said Cancun and other popular resorts along Mexico’s Caribbean coast would be spared a direct hit.

Authorities said 2,000 soldiers and marines as well as 600 federal police were deployed to prevent the type of looting that followed the devastation wrought by Wilma, a category five hurricane that killed 10 people and caused millions of dollars in damage in Cancun two years ago.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced he would cut short a trip to Canada where he held talks with US President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in order to return to Mexico “as soon as possible.” The Yucatan Peninsula’s eastern coastline was placed under a hurricane warning, as were all the coastal areas and islands of neighbouring Belize, a central American country popular with divers for its barrier reef.

While oil rigs on the US side of the Gulf did not appear directly threatened, 10 of the 834 manned production platforms and 24 of the 101 rigs were evacuated, according to the government’s Mineral Management Service.

Only 28 Atlantic hurricanes are known to have reached the intensity of category five since record keeping started in 1886, and Dean was the first such storm to hit the Atlantic basin since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

The storm has already killed at least nine people across the Caribbean.

In Jamaica, where one man died when his house caved in on him, residents began a massive clean-up one day after Dean toppled trees and power lines and flooded low-lying areas.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller announced security forces would be granted wider powers following reports of looting across the island that remained largely without power on Monday.

Jamaica was spared the worst of Dean’s massive punch as the storm’s powerful inner wall brushed just past the island.

Dean earlier swirled past Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, lashing it with heavy rain and gale-force winds and leaving at least four people dead.

Two people were also killed in the French territory of Martinique and another two died in the Dominican Republic, while thousands of people across the region fled their homes.—AFP