Fierce Hurricane Ike targets Gulf

By Gene Cherry

SALVO, North Carolina (Reuters) - Fierce Hurricane Ike weakened as it charged across the Atlantic on Friday and took aim at south Florida and the oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico while Tropical Storm Hanna was set to crash ashore in the Carolinas after killing at least 136 people in Haiti.

Hanna was expected to be just short of minimal Category 1 hurricane strength when it reaches the U.S. East Coast near the North Carolina and South Carolina border early on Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said.

Nevertheless, authorities declared states of emergency, coastal campgrounds were shut and storm alerts were issued from Georgia to New Jersey, including for Washington, D.C., as the eighth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season pulled away from the 700 far-flung islands of the Bahamas.

Ike was far more threatening.

An extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale on Thursday, it weakened a notch to a Category 3 with top sustained winds of 120 mph (195 km per hour), the Miami-based hurricane centre said.

By 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), it was spinning about 425 miles (685 km) north of the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, still days away from reaching any land. Some further weakening was possible but the hurricane centre said Ike was expected to remain a "major" storm of Category 3 or higher.

Ike's track was riddled with uncertainty.

The hurricane centre's latest official forecast took it through the Florida Keys island chain as a ferociously destructive Category 4 hurricane into the Gulf of Mexico, where around 4,000 offshore platforms produce a quarter of U.S. crude oil and 15 percent of the energy-hungry country's natural gas.