World

MIAMI — Hurricane Irma slammed into the Florida Keys Sunday, lashing the tropical island chain with fearsome wind gusts as it churns towards the US state’s west coast where a mass exodus has turned cities into ghost towns.

Six million people — one third of the state’s population — have been ordered to evacuate the path of the monster hurricane, which was upgraded to a Category Four storm as it passed over the Keys packing maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometres per hour.

In homes, hotels and school gyms, a die-hard minority who defied orders to flee were hunkered down as Irma’s roaring winds ripped boats from their moorings, flattened palm trees and tore down power lines across the island chain popular for fishing and scuba diving.

“There’s absolutely no way anybody can be outside right now,” Maggy Howes, a first responder on Key Haven, said on CNN. “You would not be able to stand or walk.”

One of the most powerful hurricanes ever to slam storm-prone Florida, Irma is threatening dangerous storm surges up to 4.5 metres, enough to cover a house, as it collides with the state after sowing devastation through the Caribbean.

A shelter of last resort set up in the Middle Keys city of Marathon was reported to be without power or running water, and surrounded by surging waters.

“Everything is underwater, I mean everything,” Larry Kahn, an editor for local news website FlKeysNews.com, reported from inside.

The cities of Naples, Fort Myers and the densely populated peninsulas of Tampa Bay on Florida’s west coast are next in the crosshairs of the historic storm, churning north at 14 kilometres per hour and already lashing the mainland with dangerous winds.

“It’s going to be horrible,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said on NBC Sunday Morning. “Now we have to hunker down and watch out for each other.” 

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn was more blunt: “We are about to get punched in the face by this storm.”

Mother delivers baby alone 

Irma smacked the Keys 57 years to the day that Hurricane Donna hit the same area in 1960, destroying nearly 75 per cent of the island chain’s buildings.

On the mainland, emergency services in Miami were sheltering in place from furious winds a dispatcher talked a woman through delivering her own baby on Sunday morning, Assistant Fire Chief Eloy Garcia told the Miami Herald.

More than one million Florida homes and businesses were without power, according to utility company Florida Power and Light, which said it had “safely shut down” one of two nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power plant.

The National Weather Service urged Floridians to keep their shoes on, to take shelter in interior rooms — far from windows — and use helmets, mattresses, pillows or blankets for protection.

At least 27 people have been killed since Irma began its march through the Caribbean, smashing through a string of islands from tiny Barbuda on Wednesday, to the tropical paradises of St Barts and St Martin, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos.

Terrified Cubans who rode out Irma in coastal towns — after it made landfall on Friday on the Camaguey Archipelago as a maximum-strength Category Five storm — reported “deafening” winds, uprooted trees and power lines, and blown rooftops.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Cuba but it caused “significant damage”, and enormous waves lashed the Malecon, Havana’s emblematic seafront, causing seawaters to penetrate deep into the capital, AFP journalists reported. 

Storm surge, tornado risk 

Irma is so wide that authorities were bracing for destructive storm surges on both coasts of Florida and the Keys as Irma follows a path north toward Georgia.

The NHC also warned of tornado risks through Sunday night, with the greatest threat lying in areas east of the storm’s path.

Strip malls, fast food restaurants and retail giants were closed for business on both of Florida’s coasts.

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the military installation home to US Central Command, issued mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the storm’s passage early on Monday, while the Kennedy Space Centre on the east coast was also closed.

In Naples, the city’s chic coastal neighbourhoods stood deserted on Sunday morning, as torrential rain beat down on streets littered with leaves ripped from palm trees.

But Viviana Sierra, who sought refuge at a shelter outside the city together with her dog, parents and brother, was sanguine about the prospect of finding her home destroyed. 

“You can replace material things but your life is very important, so I think it’s better that we stay here,” she said.

JUCHITAN, Mexico — At least 60 people died when the most powerful earthquake to hit Mexico in over eight decades tore through buildings and forced mass evacuations in the poor southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, triggering alerts as far away as Southeast Asia.

The 8.1 magnitude quake off the southern coast late Thursday was stronger than a devastating 1985 temblor that flattened swathes of Mexico City and killed thousands.

This time damage to the city was limited as the quake was deeper and farther away, but it still sent thousands of people scurrying from their homes onto the streets when the violent rumbling began that also shook Guatemala and El Salvador.

"It almost knocked me over," said Gildardo Arenas Rios, a 64-year-old security guard in Mexico City's Juarez neighbourhood, who was making his rounds when buildings started to tremble.

The Oaxacan town of Juchitan on Mexico's narrowest point bore the brunt of the disaster, with sections of the town hall, a hotel, a church, a bar and other buildings reduced to rubble.

"The situation is Juchitan is critical; this is the most terrible moment in its history," the local mayor, Gloria Sanchez, said a few hours before President Enrique Pena Nieto flew to the battered town to oversee rescue efforts.

Facades of shattered buildings, fallen tiles and broken glass from shop fronts and banks littered the pavements of Juchitan while heavily armed soldiers patrolled and stood guard at areas cordoned off due to the extent of the damage.

Startled residents stepped through the rubble of about 100 wrecked buildings, including houses, a flattened Volkswagen dealership and Juchitan's shattered town hall. Scores paced the terrain or sat outside warily, mindful of the frequent aftershocks.

"Look at what it did to my house," said Maria Magdalena Lopez, in tears outside its battered walls. "It was horrifying, it fell down."

 Alma Rosa, sitting in vigil with a relative by the body of a loved one draped in a red shroud, said: "We went to buy a coffin, but there aren't any because there are so many bodies."

 All the deaths were in three neighbouring states clustered near the epicenter that lay about 70km off the coast.

In Oaxaca, 45 people died, many of them in Juchitan, while in Chiapas 12 and in Tabasco three people lost their lives, according to federal and state officials.

In Chiapas, home to many of Mexico's indigenous ethnic groups, thousands of people in coastal areas were evacuated as a precaution when the quake sparked tsunami warnings.

Waves rose as high as 0.7 metres in Mexico, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said, though that threat passed.

State oil company Pemex said it was checking its installations for damage and closed the Salina Cruz refinery in the same region as the epicenter as a precautionary measure. It began restarting the 330,000 barrel-per-day refinery on Friday afternoon.

Woken in the night

At least 250 people in Oaxaca were also injured, according to agriculture minister Jose Calzada.

Classes were suspended in much of central and southern Mexico on Friday to allow authorities to assess the impact. Dozens of schools were damaged, officials said.

People ran into the streets in Mexico City, one of the world's largest metropolises and home to more than 20 million, and alarms sounded after the quake struck just before midnight.

Scores stood outside in central neighborhoods, some wrapped in blankets against the cool night air. Children were crying.

Liliana Villa, 35, who was in her apartment when the quake struck, fled in her nightclothes.

"It felt horrible, and I thought, 'This [building] is going to fall'," she said. 

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake's epicenter was 87km southwest of the town of Pijijiapan at a depth of 69km.

John Bellini, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre in Golden, Colorado, said Thursday's quake was the strongest in Mexico since an 8.1 temblor struck the western state of Jalisco in 1932.

Across the Pacific, the national disaster agency of the Philippines put the country's eastern seaboard on alert for possible tsunamis, although no evacuations were ordered.

Outages, aftershocks

Rescue workers searched through the night for anyone trapped in collapsed buildings, but the toll appeared to be less severe than that seen in some far less powerful tremors.

Windows were shattered at Mexico City airport and power went out in several neighbourhoods of the capital, affecting more than 1 million people. The cornice of a hotel came down in the southern tourist city of Oaxaca, a witness said.

Mexio City is built on a spongy, drained lake bed that amplifies earthquakes along the volcanic country's multiple seismic fault lines, even when they occur hundreds of miles away.

The 1985 earthquake was just inland, about 370km from Mexico City. Thursday's quake was 756km from the city. 

Authorities reported dozens of aftershocks, and President Pena Nieto said the quake was felt by around 50 million of Mexico's roughly 120 million population.

Mexico is evaluating whether the quake will trigger a payout from a World Bank-backed catastrophe bond, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Friday. Meade said the bond's coverage could reach $150 million, depending on magnitude and location.

But he said Mexico has sufficient funds to pay for a cleanup whether the bond was triggered or not.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — More than a quarter of a million mostly Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh since fresh violence erupted in Myanmar last October, the United Nations said Thursday, as more bodies washed up a day after boats sank attempting to cross the river that divides the two countries.

In the last two weeks alone 164,000 mostly Rohingya civilians have fled to Bangladesh, overwhelming refugee camps that were already bursting at the seams and triggering warnings of a humanitarian crisis.

Scores more have died trying to flee the fighting in Myanmar's Rakhine state, where witnesses say entire villages have been burned to the ground since Rohingya militants launched a series of coordinated attacks on August 25, prompting a military-led crackdown.

Police in Bangladesh say they have recovered the bodies of 17 people, many of them children, who drowned when at least three boats packed with Rohingya refugees sank at the mouth of the Naf River that runs along the border.

Bangladesh border guards say desperate Rohingya are attempting to cross the river using small fishing trawlers that are dangerously overcrowded.

At least five have capsized leaving more than 60 people dead, police and border guards say.

Rohingya refugee Tayeba Khatun said she and her family had waited four days for a place on a boat to take them to Bangladesh after fleeing her township in Rakhine. 

"People were squeezing into whatever space they could find on the rickety boats. I saw two of those boats sink," she told AFP.

"Most managed to swim ashore but the children were missing."

'Starving to death' 

Those flocking into Bangladesh have brought with them harrowing testimony of murder, rape and widespread arson by Myanmar's army.

Most have walked for days to reach Bangladesh and the United Nations says many are sick, exhausted and in desperate need of shelter, food and water.

Existing camps which hosted around 400,000 refugees before the latest influx are now completely overwhelmed, leaving tens of thousands of new arrivals with nowhere to shelter from the monsoon rains. 

Mazor Mustafa, a Bangladeshi businessman handing out food and rehydration fluids, said the situation was getting worse as more people arrived. 

"It is not at all enough food," he told AFP of the ration kits being distributed.

"These people are hungry, starving to death together."

 The latest figures mean that nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims have fled since fighting first broke out last October.

Impoverished Bangladesh initially tried to block them from entering, but has now given up attempting to stem the tide.

On Wednesday its foreign ministry summoned the Myanmar ambassador to demand immediate measures to curb the violence.

The Rohingya are denied citizenship in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, which is under growing international pressure over its apartheid-like treatment of the stateless minority.

UN investigators have said a military crackdown that followed ambushes by Rohingya militants in October last year may amount to ethnic cleansing.

Bullet wounds 

The recent fighting is the fiercest in Rakhine, Myanmar's poorest state, in years.

Cattle rancher Mohammad Shaker, 27, crossed into Bangladesh on Thursday suffering a gunshot wound to his chest that he said was inflicted by Myanmar soldiers.

"I tried to flee with our stock near the river when the military started shooting at us," he told AFP, nursing his untreated wound.

"I fell on the ground and later my relatives found me. We hid in the hills for days, and this morning managed to come here."

 Scores of refugees have arrived in Bangladesh needing treatment for serious bullet wounds, while others have lost limbs after apparently setting off landmines along the border.

On Thursday, a mass funeral was held at a mosque near the border for five men whose relatives said they had been shot dead by the Myanmar military. The relatives carried their bodies over the border so they could be buried in Bangladesh.

Myanmar says some 27,000 mainly ethnic Buddhist Rakhine have also fled in the opposite direction since August 25, accusing Rohingya militants of targeting their communities.

Myanmar's government, led by Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has rejected allegations of atrocities, accusing the international media, NGOs and the UN of fabrications.

It has placed the blame for the violence squarely on the militants, saying they are setting fire to their own homes.

Myanmar said Thursday that 6,600 Rohingya homes and 201 non-Muslim homes had been burned to the ground since August 25.

They added some 30 civilians had been killed — seven Rohingyas, seven Hindus and 16 Rakhine Buddhists — in the fighting.

Myanmar's army has previously said around 430 people had been killed in the fighting, including militants and soldiers.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — When his family of six crossed the monsoon-soaked Mayu mountains last week, Mohammed Ishmail tied his four-year-old daughter to his back with a longyi, or Myanmar sarong. His wife carried their two-year-old the same way.

"Some parts were so steep we had to pull ourselves up by tree roots," said Ishmail, a Rohingya Muslim, in an interview near the Kutapalong settlement for refugees in Bangladesh, shortly after arriving on Tuesday.

"At night, we just cut a clearing in the bush and slept there. We had two umbrellas for shelter."

 The trek through the dense bush of the mountains took two days, but the journey from his home in Khin Tha Ma village — which he says was on fire the last time he saw it — took 10. He says it felt like a month.

The number of refugees who have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state since militant attacks there on August 25 stands at nearly 150,000. 

They have come by land, river and sea. Many have died along the way. Others have found themselves detained by human traffickers, demanding payment for their rescue.

Their destination is the Cox's Bazar region of impoverished Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya already live in makeshift camps, reliant on overstretched aid agencies.

Once through the mountains, Ishmail's family came across villages in the northern part of the Maungdaw district — the epicentre of violence in the state since October — that had been abandoned. By his count, only about one in 20 houses had survived fires that have swept the area.

"Some people are still hiding in the forest on the Maungdaw side but in some villages there's no one," he said. "There was no one to ask directions."

 But then there was. As they reached a canal and were trying to find a way to cross it, he said, two young Myanmar soldiers spotted them and aimed their guns, he said.

"I put my hands up and shouted, 'We're going to Bangladesh'," he said. There was a tense silence before the soldiers lowered their weapons. 

"After that they showed us the best way to cross the canal," he added.

In one village, to escape the rain, Mohammed Ishmail entered a house still standing to find the bodies of five boys, who appeared to be teenagers, their necks hacked and heads nearly severed.

The death toll in the conflict is more than 400 and rising.

Myanmar says most of those killed have been insurgents, but accounts from new arrivals in Bangladesh suggest reprisals by Myanmar security forces and Buddhists against Rohingya civilians the government says are in cahoots with "extremist Bengali terrorists".

Myanmar rejects accusations that its security forces are targeting civilians saying they are fighting "terrorists".

Dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, have washed up on the Bangladesh side of a border river, many with bullet or knife wounds, according to Bangladesh border guards. Fishermen report seeing bodies floating in the river.

Reuters was shown one cadaver — what looked to be a teenage boy lying face up on the muddy river bank, a gaping wound on his face washed clean by the river.

In Maungdaw, thousands of people are on the move. A Rohingya aid worker, who was in touch with Reuters during his flight, recorded video of the journey on his mobile phone.

"It's like something I've never seen before, not even in any film," the refugee said after his arrival in Cox's Bazar.

The footage appears to show hundreds of people lining up to cross a river in Laung Don village. Some swim across, as two small ferries run back and forth.

At one river crossing, the aid worker said, fighters from the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (ARSA) prevented ferries from crossing for half a day, telling civilians to return to their homes. 

Campaign group Fortify Rights has documented how ARSA has prevented men and boys from leaving the area.

The refugee, who asked not to be identified so he could freely discuss his journey, said the fighters backed down when villagers pleaded with them.

In southern Maungdaw, the military's campaign has driven tens of thousands of people to the coast. Bangladeshi boatmen, in their hundreds, are going to pick them up.

SHAMLAPUR, Bangladesh/DHAKA — Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi came under more pressure on Tuesday from countries with Muslim populations to halt violence against Rohingya Muslims that has sent nearly 125,000 of them fleeing over the border to Bangladesh in just over 10 days.

Reuters reporters saw hundreds more exhausted Rohingya arriving on boats near the Bangladeshi border village of Shamlapur on Tuesday, suggesting the exodus was far from over.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said on Tuesday the country is ready to ease the burden of Bangladesh in dealing with the Rohingya Muslims fleeing from Myanmar, but the help is likely to be only humanitarian, not financial.

"We will continue to discuss what sort of support Indonesia could make to ease the burden of the Bangladesh government," Marsudi told a news conference after she met Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali in Dhaka.

"This humanitarian crisis shall be ended. I want to repeat, this humanitarian crisis shall be ended," she told reporters in Dhaka, a day after meetings in the Myanmar capital.

On Wednesday, Indonesia's ambassador to Bangladesh will meet the foreign minister to discuss relief assistance, which she said will be more on the humanitarian side than monetary, she told Reuters on the sidelines of the brief press meeting.

The latest violence in Myanmar's northwestern Rakhine state began on August 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base. The ensuing clashes and a military counteroffensive have killed at least 400 people and triggered the exodus of villagers to Bangladesh.

The treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar's roughly 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing Suu Kyi, who has been accused by Western critics of not speaking out for the minority that has long complained of persecution.

Myanmar says its security forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against "terrorists" responsible for a string of attacks on police posts and the army since last October.

Myanmar officials blamed Rohingya militants for the burning of homes and civilian deaths but rights monitors and Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh say the Myanmar army is trying to force them out with a campaign of arson and killings.

"Indonesia is taking the lead, and ultimately there is a possibility of ASEAN countries joining in," H.T. Imam, a political adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told Reuters.

He was referring to the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations that includes both Myanmar and Indonesia.

"If we can keep the pressure on Myanmar from ASEAN, from India as well, that will be good... If the international conscience is awakened, that would put pressure on Myanmar."

 Malaysia, another ASEAN member, summoned Myanmar's ambassador to express displeasure over the violence and scolded Myanmar for making "little, if any" progress on the problem.

"Malaysia believes that the matter of sustained violence and discrimination against the Rohingyas should be elevated to a higher international forum," Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said in a statement.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has said the violence against Rohingya Muslims constituted genocide, told Suu Kyi the violence was of deep concern to the Muslim world, and he was sending his foreign minister to Bangladesh.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a visit to Myanmar on Tuesday, during which he will meet top officials, including Suu Kyi.

Pakistan, home to a large Rohingya community, has expressed "deep anguish".

Full camp

The latest estimate of the numbers who have crossed into Bangladesh since August 25, based on calculations by UN workers, is 123,600.

That takes to about 210,000 the number of Rohingya who have sought refuge in Bangladesh since October, when Rohingya insurgents staged smaller attacks on security posts, triggering a major Myanmar army counteroffensive and sending about 87,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh.

Refugees arriving in Shamlapur, and residents of the village, said hundreds of boats had arrived on Monday and Tuesday with several thousand people.

Reuters reporters saw men, women, children and a few possessions, including chickens, disembark from one boat.

"The army set fire to houses," said Salim Ullah, 28, a farmer from Myanmar's village of Kyauk Pan Du, gripping a sack of belongings.

"We got on the boat at daybreak. I came with my mother, wife and two children. There were 40 people on the boat, including 25 women."

 The new arrivals — many sick or wounded — have strained the resources of aid agencies and communities already helping hundreds of thousands of refugees from previous spasms of violence in Myanmar. 

Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said one camp in Bangladesh, Kutupalong, had reached "full capacity" and resources at others were being stretched.

"We are doing what we can, but will need to seek more resources," Tan said.

Bangladesh is concerned about Myanmar army activity on the border and would lodge a complaint if Bangladeshi territory was violated, an interior ministry official said.

A Bangladesh border guard officer said two blasts were heard on Tuesday on the Myanmar side, after two on Monday fuelled speculation Myanmar forces had laid land mines.

One boy had his left leg blown off near a border crossing before being brought to Bangladesh for treatment, while another boy suffered minor injuries, the officer, Manzurul Hassan Khan, said, adding the blast could have been a mine explosion.

The Myanmar army has not commented on the blasts near the border but said in a statement on Tuesday Rohingya insurgents were planning bomb attacks in Myanmar cities including the capital, Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay to "attract more attention from the world".

BERLIN — Angela Merkel appeared to be powering ahead on Monday to a fourth term as chancellor of Germany, after her rival Martin Schulz failed to halt her advance in a crucial televised debate three weeks before elections.

Sunday's prime-time TV clash had been billed as Schulz's last chance to sway a decisive share of voters to his cause and halt a devastating popularity slide.

But polls following the 90-minute showdown, which was watched by 16.1 million people, gave Merkel the clear edge over Schulz, a former European Parliament chief.

"Merkel came out as sure, Schulz was hardly able to land a punch. The candidate is an honourable man. But being honourable alone won't make one chancellor," wrote Sueddeutsche daily commentator Heribert Prantl.

With millions of voters still undecided, Schulz had been looking to the debate to erode the commanding 17 per cent age point lead of Merkel's CDU Party and their Bavarian CSU allies ahead of the September 24 polls.

Schulz, who had previously complained that Merkel was lulling voters to sleep with her refusal to engage in combative debate, went on the offensive quickly on the hot-button issue of migration.

He accused Merkel of failing to coordinate plans with EU neighbours when she decided to open Germany's borders in 2015 to allow in refugees, many from war-torn Syria and Iraq.

But Merkel was not rattled, countering that: "In the life of a chancellor, there are moments when you have to make a quick decision."

And as Schulz voiced his wish to end EU membership talks with Turkey amid escalating tensions with Ankara, Merkel stole the issue from under his feet as she said she did not "see them ever joining" the bloc.

Together with EU counterparts, she will examine if "we can end these membership talks", Merkel added.

Merkel's tough line comes after Ankara arrested two more German nationals for "political reasons", according to Berlin.

The plunge in relations began after Germany sharply criticised Ankara over the crackdown that followed last year's failed coup attempt there.

'Stiff and dowdy' 

But for the minor skirmishes, commentators lamented it was more of a "duet than a duel" in the spirit of the right-left "grand coalition" Merkel has led since 2013.

"That wasn't a TV debate, it was a torturous 90-minute grand coalition therapy discussion," said Dietmar Bartsch, a candidate from the far-left Die Linke.

"Nothing on climate, nothing on education, nothing on digitalisation," Greens Party leader Cem Ozdemir tweeted during the event. "When will they start talking about the future?" 

Opinion polls following the programme showed a clear victory for Merkel, with public broadcaster ARD saying 55 per cent found her more convincing while 35 per cent plumped for Schulz.

An ZDF survey was closer but still had Merkel ahead with 32 per cent, against 29 per cent who thought Schulz performed better. 

Merkel "appeared to be more competent than in any previous duel. She was not brilliant, but sure. Schulz, on the other hand, was so stiff and dowdy, like Merkel was in previous duels", wrote Prantl. 

Munich's Merkur daily also noted that "in an increasingly uncertain world which is led by testosterone-filled leaders, people don't know what Schulz wants. But they know what Merkel can do”.

Members of Merkel's party feted the results, with Julia Kloeckner tweeting: "Angela Merkel: Stateswoman. Schulz: election candidate”.

But Schulz's Social Democrats equally applauded the man who is known to be a fiery orator.

Manuela Schwesig, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state premier, said: "Martin Schulz has shown that he can be chancellor."

Sunday's so-called "television duel" between the election campaign's two leading candidates was the dramatic high point of Germany's sleepy electoral campaign season.

Having already fought three previous general elections, the famously cautious Merkel is no stranger to the TV format.

But this was the first time that she has prevailed, with surveys immediately after each of the previous three editions showing a popularity bounce for her opponents.

HOUSTON/LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana — Tropical Storm Harvey bore down on eastern Texas and Louisiana on Wednesday, bringing the catastrophic downpours that paralysed the US energy hub of Houston with record rainfall and drove tens of thousands of people from their homes.

The storm that first came ashore on Friday near Corpus Christi, Texas, as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years has killed at least 17 people and forced 30,000 people to flee to emergency shelters.

Damage has been estimated at tens of billions of dollars, making it one of the costliest US natural disasters.

Clear skies in Houston on Wednesday brought relief to the fourth-largest US city after five days of downpours but Harvey pushed northeast, drenching cities including Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Some Houston residents began to leave emergency shelters, apprehensive about discovering what remained of the homes they had fled.

Handyman Mike Dickerson, 52, carried a grocery bag of his possessions through the city's streets as he tried to figure out how to make it back to his home, which was waist-deep in water the last time he saw it.

"A lot of people are going back now because everything looks dry around here. But people who lost everything have nowhere to go and are still at the convention centre," Dickerson said. "They are just telling everyone to call FEMA, tell them about the damage."

 As Harvey churned out of the Houston area, it made landfall for a third time early on Wednesday near the Texas border at 11 am EDT (1600 GMT) with winds up to 75 kph. It was expected to bring an additional 7.5cm to 15.2cm of rain to an area about 80 miles east of Houston as well as southwestern Louisiana, where some areas have already had more than 18 inches of rain.

Hundreds of people who had fled their homes around Lake Charles packed into a civic centre that served as an emergency shelter. Pat Ortego, a retired nurse who was working as a volunteer, said the shelter was bracing for more displaced people.

One shelter resident, Edward Lewis, 54, said he awoke from a deep sleep on Monday night in his home in Lake Charles, swung his legs out of bed and landed in ankle-deep water. He flagged down a passing rescue boat and spent the rest of the night at a church before being taken on a city transit bus to the Lake Charles civic centre on Tuesday.

"No one has said when we can go home," he said.

Moody's Analytics is estimating the economic cost from Harvey for southeast Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion.

As of Wednesday morning, Texas officials said close to 49,000 homes had suffered flood damage, with more than 1,000 destroyed. Some 195,000 people have begun the process of seeking federal help, FEMA said.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner imposed a curfew from 12am to 5am amid reports of looting, armed robberies and people impersonating police officers.

Texas is investigating hundreds of complaints of price gouging involving loaves of bread offered for $15, fuel for $100 a gallon and hotels raising room rates, the state's attorney general said on Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump visited Corpus Christi and Austin on Tuesday to survey damage from the first major natural disaster to test his crisis leadership and discuss the response with state officials.

"After witnessing first hand the horror and devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!" Trump said on Twitter on Wednesday.

The storm made it less likely that Trump would act on his threat to shut the federal government over funding for a border wall, Goldman Sachs economists said on Wednesday. They now estimate the probability of a shutdown at 35 per cent, down from 50 per cent previously.

Largest US refinery shut

The nation's largest refinery, Valero Energy Corp's 335,000 barrel-per-day facility in Port Arthur was shut, said sources familiar with plant operations.

The storm has affected nearly one-fifth of US refining capacity, sparking concerns about gasoline supply. The national average gasoline price rose to $2.404 a gallon, up six cents from a week ago, with higher spikes in Texas.

Harvey has drawn comparisons with Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans 12 years ago, killing more than 1,800 people and causing an estimated $108 billion in damage. 

Among the confirmed fatalities in Houston was Police Sergeant Steve Perez, a 34-year veteran of the force who drowned while attempting to drive to work on Sunday.

In Beaumont, northeast of Houston, a woman clutching her baby daughter was swept away in raging flooding. The baby was saved but the mother died, Beaumont police said.

In all, 17 people have died, according to government officials and the Houston Chronicle.

US Coast Guard helicopters and boats have rescued more than 4,000 people. Thousands of others have been taken to safety by police, rescue workers and citizen volunteers.

The National Hurricane Centre on Tuesday afternoon said a record 131.78cm of rain had fallen in Texas due to Harvey, a record for the continental United States.

MAUNGDAW , Myanmar — At least 18,500 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh since fighting erupted in Myanmar's neighbouring Rakhine state six days ago, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday.

Plumes of smoke billowed from several burning villages in the worst-hit section of the state, according to an AFP reporter on a government-led trip to the area, as the violence showed little sign of abating despite security sweeps by Myanmar's police and troops.

The streets of Maungdaw — northern Rakhine's largest town — were virtually deserted as fires flickered among charred remains of houses and occasional burst of gunfire echoed in the distance.

The clashes began on Friday when militants from Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority community staged deadly attacks on police posts, prompting raids on the community and searches by troops and police.

At least 110 people, including 11 state officials, have been confirmed dead since then and thousands of Rohingya have poured across the border to Bangladesh despite Dhaka's attempts to stop them.

"As of last night, 18,500 people have come across," Chris Lom, the IOM's Asia-Pacific spokesman, told AFP, adding an unknown number were still stuck on the Myanmar side of the border.

An estimated 6,000 Rohingya on Tuesday massed at the "zero line" border with Bangladesh, days after the area came under mortar and machine gun fire by Myanmar security forces.

The Rohingya, the world's largest stateless minority and subject to severe restrictions on their movements, are barred from officially crossing.

Bangladeshi authorities on Wednesday toughened patrols in a bid to prevent more arrivals in a country that already hosts an estimated 400,000 Rohingya, albeit in abject conditions.

Rohingya have sneaked across the land border in large number or swum the Naf River which marks part of the frontier.

But tragedy befell some of them. The bodies of two Rohingya women and two children washed up on Bangladeshi soil on Wednesday, an official there told AFP, drowned after their rickety boat capsized.

Scores more were found alive on the remote Bangladeshi island of St Martin's, according to coastguards there, after taking a risky passage on barely seaworthy vessels.

Khadija Begum, a Rohingya woman from Rathedaung, was detained on arrival by Bangladeshi officials.

"We thought it would be easier to face the sea than the [Myanmar] army," she told AFP in tears. 

Fight and flight 

Ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and other tribal groups are also among the dead and displaced after allegedly being targeted by Rohingya militants.

Five ethnic Buddhist men were found stabbed to death early on Wednesday in Maungdaw, which is under curfew, Ye Htut, the town's district chief, told AFP.

With information trickling out, a picture has emerged of a cat-and-mouse game between militants and security forces played out in remote hamlets, fields and forest hideouts.

The office of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said militants have repeatedly detonated homemade explosives and tried to firebomb police posts and ambush patrols.

Myanmar classes the militants as "Bengali terrorists" and accuses them of setting fire both to Rohingya homes and those of other communities.

Rohingya arriving in Bangladesh have told a different story, saying their homes had been set on fire by police, troops and Buddhist mobs. 

A Rohingya villager near the town of Maungdaw, speaking on condition of anonymity, said residents fled his hamlet as security forces approached and torched their homes.

"Villagers are running away... where do we have to live now?" the villager said.

It was not immediately possible to verify his account.

Maximum restraint? 

Rakhine has been beset by religious violence since 2012 but analysts say the emergence of organised militancy is a game-changer.

Displaced Rohingya reaching Bangladesh have told AFP some men are heeding a call to arms by the militants and staying behind to fight in their villages.

The Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army claims its men launched Friday's surprise attacks on police posts, killing 11 state officials, with knives, homemade explosives and a few guns

After years in which the Rohingya largely avoided violence, the group emerged last October to carry out deadly attacks on police posts.

That prompted a months-long security crackdown by Myanmar's army which left scores dead and forced 87,000 people to flee to Bangladesh.

The Pope and the UN are among those urging Myanmar to protect Rohingya civilians from the latest violence.

With pressure mounting, a Myanmar government official on Tuesday said security forces would use "maximum restraint" in coming days but insisted on the country's right to defend itself from "terrorists".

HOUSTON — US President Donald Trump headed to Texas on Tuesday to survey the response to devastating Tropical Storm Harvey, the first natural disaster of his White House tenure, as officials in Houston struggled to manage the massive floodwaters.

The slow-moving storm has brought catastrophic flooding to Texas, killed at least nine people, led to mass evacuations and paralysed Houston, the fourth most-populous US city. Some 30,000 people were expected to seek emergency shelter as the flooding entered its fourth day.

Officials in Harris County, where Houston is located, said reservoirs built to handle drainage water were beginning to overflow on Tuesday. They released water to alleviate pressure on two dams, a move that would add to flooding along the Buffalo Bayou waterway that runs through the area.

"This is something we've never seen before," said Jeff Linder, a meteorologist with Harris County's flood control district. "We have uncertainty in how the water is going to react," when releases from the reservoirs hit overflowing drainage.

Harvey has roiled energy markets and wrought damage estimated to be in the billions of dollars, with rebuilding likely to last beyond Trump's current four-year term in office.

"Leaving now for Texas!" Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday morning before he left the White House to begin his trip.

Trump was scheduled to arrive in Corpus Christi, near where Harvey came ashore on Friday as the most powerful hurricane to strike Texas in more than 50 years.

While much of the damage in Houston has been rain-related, the storm's winds picked up overnight, bending street signs and tearing at metal fences in the downtown.

More rescues

Much of the Houston metropolitan area, where 6.8 million people live, remained underwater on Tuesday, with some parts of the region recording more than 1m of rain since the storm's arrival. Dangerous rescues went on through the night as police, firefighters and National Guard troops in helicopters, boats and trucks pulled stranded residents from flooded homes.

About 9,000 evacuees were staying at Houston's George R. Brown Convention Centre, with the American Red Cross providing warm meals — oatmeal for Tuesday breakfast — and handing out donated clothing.

Cots stretched across the city block-size complex, which was recently renovated ahead of the Super Bowl in February, and has become one of the largest shelters for those displaced by Harvey.

"I'm just trying to stay strong," said Julio Gamez, 35, who evacuated to the centre on Saturday night with his wife after floodwaters rose to within 30cm of his roof. "Everything's gone. We've lost everything. But at least we're safe."

 Hundreds of volunteers poured into the center. 

"I couldn't sit at home any longer and be in my own comfort while others were struggling," said Alvin Tan, 31, who works in Houston's chemical industry. 

Other shelters were set up in Dallas, about 402km to the north, and Austin, 258km west, with the latter expected to take in 7,000 people.

Officials believed about 1,000 households remained to be rescued, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena told ABC's "Good Morning America".

 Forecasters drew comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, which lay waste to New Orleans and killed 1,800 people. Tuesday marked the 12th anniversary of Katrina hitting Louisiana.

"No city welcomed more New Orleanians following Katrina than Houston and our hearts break for them as Hurricane Harvey displaces so many of their citizens," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement marking the anniversary.

The administration of then-president George W. Bush drew accusations that his response was slow and inadequate — criticism that dealt a serious blow to his presidency.

Before Harvey, the last Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in Texas was Carla in 1961.

Fatal swim

Among the most recent deaths from Harvey was a man who drowned on Monday night while trying to swim across flooded Houston-area roads, the Houston Chronicle quoted the Montgomery county constable's office as saying.

The storm center was in the Gulf of Mexico about 185km southeast of Houston on Monday morning. It was likely to remain just off the coast of Texas through Tuesday night before moving inland over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, according to the US National Hurricane Centre.

Since coming ashore, Harvey has virtually stalled along the Texas coast, picking up warm water from the Gulf of Mexico and dumping torrential rain from San Antonio to Louisiana. 

The Houston metro area has suffered some of the worst precipitation with certain areas expected to receive more than 127cm of rain in a week, more than it typically receives for a year.

Harvey was expected to produce another 18-33cm of rain through Thursday over parts of the upper Texas coast into southwestern Louisiana, the National Weather Service said.

Schools and office buildings were closed throughout the area, with hundreds of roads blocked by high water and the city's two main airports shut.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to half of US refining capacity. The reduction in supply led gasoline futures to hit their highest level in two years this week as Harvey knocked out about 13 per cent of total US refining capacity, based on company reports and Reuters estimates.

The floods could destroy as much as $20 billion in insured property, making the storm one of the costliest in history for US insurers, according to Wall Street analysts.

WASHINGTON/SEOUL — President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that "all options are on the table" as the United States considers its response to North Korea's firing of a ballistic missile over northern Japan's Hokkaido Island into the sea. 

The test, one of the most provocative ever from the reclusive state, came as US and South Korean forces conduct annual military exercises on the peninsula, angering North Korea, which sees them as a preparation for invasion.

North Korea has conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests under its young leader, Kim Jong-un, the most recent on Saturday, in defiance of UN sanctions, but firing projectiles over mainland Japan is rare.

Trump, who has vowed not to let North Korea develop nuclear missiles that can hit the mainland United States, said the world had received North Korea's latest message "loud and clear".

"This regime has signalled its contempt for its neighbours, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behaviour," Trump said in a statement.

"Threatening and destabilising actions only increase the North Korean regime's isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table," he said.

Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke and agreed that North Korea "poses a grave and growing direct threat to the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, as well as to countries around the world", the White House said.

The Republic of Korea is South Korea's official name.

"President Trump and Prime Minister Abe committed to increasing pressure on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international community to do the same," the statement said.

The US disarmament ambassador said Washington still needed to do "further analysis" of the launch, which would be the subject of a UN Security Council meeting later on Tuesday.

"It's another provocation by North Korea, they just seem to continue to happen," US envoy Robert Wood told reporters in Geneva before a session of the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament.

North Korean envoy Han Tae-song told the session the United States was driving the Korean peninsula "towards an extreme level of explosion" by deploying strategic assets and conducting nuclear war drills.

In China, North Korea's lone major ally, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the crisis was "approaching a critical juncture", but it was also maybe a turning point to open the door to peace talks.

Russia insisted North Korea abide by UN Security Council resolutions.

South Korea's military said the missile was launched from near the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, just before 6am (2100 GMT on Monday) and flew 2,700km, reaching an altitude of about 550km. 

Four South Korean fighter jets bombed a military firing range on Tuesday after President Moon Jae-in asked the military to demonstrate capabilities to counter North Korea. 

South Korea and the United States had discussed deploying additional "strategic assets" on the Korean Peninsula, the presidential Blue House said in a statement, without giving more details.

North Korea remained defiant.

"The US should know that it can neither browbeat the DPRK with any economic sanctions and military threats and blackmail nor make the DPRK flinch from the road chosen by itself," North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun said, using the initials of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North vows to never give up its weapons programmes, saying they are necessary to counter hostility from the United States and its allies.

Loudspeaker warnings 

The United States has said before that all options, including military, are on the table, although its preference is for a diplomatic solution. 

Some experts said the test appeared to have been of a recently developed intermediate-range Hwasong-12 missile, but there was no clear consensus. 

Earlier this month, North Korea threatened to fire four missiles into the sea near the US Pacific territory of Guam after Trump said it would face "fire and fury" if it threatened the United States.

North Korea fired what it said was a rocket carrying a communications satellite into orbit over Japan in 2009 after warning of its plan. The United States, Japan and South Korea considered it a ballistic missile test.

The latest missile fell into the sea 1,180 km east of Cape Erimo on Hokkaido, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.

Japanese television and radio broadcasters broke into their regular programming with a "J-Alert" warning citizens of the missile launch. Bullet train services were temporarily halted and warnings went out over loudspeakers in towns in Hokkaido.