Aid workers have delivered high-energy biscuits and water to storm victims [EPA]

Hurricane Ike strengthened to an "extremely dangerous" category four storm in the Atlantic on Saturday, according to the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC).

Storm warnings were issued for Gonaives and other parts of Haiti ahead of the storm.

Some residents climbed on top of cars to reach the second floor of their homes, where they had piled up furniture and spread sheets to provide shade, said Holly Inurreta of Catholic Relief Services.

"We are very concerned about Ike," she said. "Any bit more of rain and Gonaives will be cut off again."

But the NHC said Ike was expected to spare Haiti a direct hit.

"But they will still get pretty strong winds and rain [in Haiti] ... as well as the Dominican Republic," warned Cristina Carrasco, an NHC forecaster.

Haiti is still battling with flooding from recent Tropical Storm Hanna, which left hundreds of people dead and hundreds of thousands of people displaced.

Ike threatens Cuba

Packing sustained winds near 215kph, Ike was about 145km east of Grand Turk Island near the southern Bahamas shortly before 2100 GMT, and was expected to barrel into Cuba on Sunday or Monday, the NHC said in an advisory.

"Ike is now an extremely dangerous category four hurricane on the [one to five] Saffir-Simpson scale," the NHC said.

Ike also has the potential to strike the southern  Florida Keys as it heads into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Louisiana and the rest of the US Gulf Coast which last week weathered Hurricane Gustav.

In Gonaives, UN peacekeepers and aid workers delivered high-energy biscuits and water to storm victims, many of whom had not eaten since Monday.

"What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth," Hedi Annabi, a UN envoy, said.

'Hell on earth'

Dozens of children raised their hands and ran after UN food trucks that rumbled through the damp streets of Gonaives. "Hungry! Hungry!" they yelled.

Food also was brought to hungry inmates at the local jail.

The water in many neighborhoods has receded from about three metres high to about knee deep, but at least 40,000 people remain in emergency shelters.

However, the death toll in Gonaives has been reduced after Ernst Dorfeuille, the police commissioner for the city, told The Associated Press that a news report the previous evening that quoted him as saying 495 bodies had been found in Gonaives following Tropical Storm Hanna was completely wrong.

He said there were 32 confirmed deaths in this city on Haiti's west coast from the storm that hit on Monday.

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