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CANCUN, (Mexico), Oct 23 (AFP): Six people were listed as killed and two as missing early Sunday after Hurricane Wilma erased beaches and flooded luxury hotels up to the third floor in Mexico's famous Yucatan resorts.
More than 71,000 people, many of them foreign tourists, remained in emergency refuge centers for a second night as slow-moving, powerful Wilma continued to pummel the region with high winds and rains.
At 0900 GMT, the storm was located 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Cancun and slowly drifting northeast, according to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The category-two storm carried sustained winds of up to 160 kilometers (100 miles) an hour, and was expected to begin moving more quickly in a northeasterly direction over the next 24 hours.
"Some increase in strength is possible today," the center warned.
In Cuba, where Wilma has already spawned several tornados, the government continued to evacuate more than half a million people from its westernmost provinces.
The storm was expected to brush the island's northwest coast on Sunday before heading toward Florida.
On Saturday, Florida authorities ordered the mandatory evacuation of 80,000 residents of the Florida Keys in advance of the storm's arrival.
The famous beach resorts of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula were battered with heavy winds and rains for nearly two days Friday and Saturday.
The storm wiped out electricity and telephone lines, and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Playa del Carmen, popular with European and North American tourists, officials said Saturday.
"Playa is destroyed. We have water everywhere, all of the power lines are down, we are flooded all over," said Moises Ramirez, the town's civil defense chief.
In Cancun, which sat under the hurricane's center for hours on end, floodwaters rose up to eight meters (26 feet), reaching the third story of some hotels.
President Vicente Fox announced he would visit the devastated region on Sunday, as four Wilma-related deaths were reported by Mexican authorities.
Two people died of burns, and five others were injured, after a gas cylinder plunged from a rooftop in Playa del Carmen and exploded during the storm Friday, according to the Quintana Roo state governor's office.
A man was killed by a falling tree branch, and earlier a 33-year-old woman was electrocuted and killed in Cancun as she readied for the storm, authorities said.
Two dead bodies were discovered on Cozumel Island.
At least 12 people were arrested after police caught them attempting to loot abandoned shops and other businesses, officials said.
Meanwhile: A new tropical storm named Alpha closed in on the Dominican Republic early Sunday, making this year's Atlantic hurricane season the most active on record, US forecasters said.
"Alpha becomes the 22nd named storm of the season and breaks the all-time record for the most active season on record," the National Hurricane Center said.
At 0900 GMT, the center of the storm was located about 15 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of the city of Barahona in the Dominican Republic, with maximum sustained winds near 85 kilometers (50 miles) per hour, the Miami-based NHC said.
The 21st named storm of the season, Hurricane Wilma, was moving north of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where it was blamed for six deaths.
The NHC does not use the letters X, Y or Z to name storms. This is the first time it has exhausted the Roman alphabet and has had to resort to the Greek one to name storms in the Atlantic basin.
Alpha was traveling in a northwesterly direction at nearly 22 kilometers (14 miles) per hour.
"This motion is expected to continue until landfall in the next hour or so," forecasters said. "A turn to the north-northwest is expected over the next 24 hours."
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