WASHINGTON, Sept 19: Hurricane Isabel killed 17 people as it thrashed across the eastern seaboard of the United States from North Carolina and headed north to New Jersey, officials said on Friday.

The US capital shut down on Friday for a second day after fierce winds and flooding from the hurricane left nearly one million people in the Washington area without power and led to at least one death in the city.

Seven people died in Virginia, four of them in vehicle accidents and three killed by falling trees, according to a spokesman for the Department for Emergency Management in Virginia. One person died when a tree fell on a mobile home.

There were three storm-related deaths in North Carolina, one of them a car accident and one incident where a woman was killed when a tree crushed her car. The third person to die was a utility repairman.

New Jersey police said that a tree fell on a car in the western part of the state around sunrise on Friday, killing one person.

Isabel peaked with sustained winds of 160kph as it hit the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina on Thursday. It weakened to a tropical storm late on Thursday.—Reuters