Tropical Storm Gustav grew into a hurricane Tuesday after emerging in the Caribbean, threatening Haiti with powerful winds less than two weeks after the country was hit by a deadly storm.
"Reports from an air force hurricane aircraft indicate that Gustav has become a hurricane with maximum winds near 80 mph (130 kilometers per hour)," the US National Hurricane Center said in a 2:20 am (0620 GMT) advisory.
Earlier, the Haitian government urged its population to take precautions and appealed for international help to deal with the storm's aftermath, some 10 days after Tropical Storm Fay left about 47 people dead or missing on the island.
"In the face of the danger threatening Haiti, I ask national civil protection committees and our friends in international cooperation to help the government manage the risks and disasters," Interior Minister Paul-Antoine Bien-Aime said on national television.
The neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, also issued a hurricane warning for the southwest of the country.
Gustav formed over the Caribbean Sea on Monday, becoming the seventh tropical storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.
The storm was expected to dump five to seven inches of rain over Hispaniola, with isolated maximum accumulations of up to 25 inches possible, threatening to produce flash floods and mudslides, the hurricane center said.
The eye of the storm was expected to be near Haiti's coast Tuesday afternoon, it said. Gustav was about 210 kilometers (130 miles) southeast of Port-au-Prince at around 0600 GMT, the center said.
A hurricane center map forecasting the storm's trajectory showed Gustav heading toward Cuba after striking Haiti.
