Miami.- Hurricane Ike, currently located about 980 km east-northeast of the Leeward Islands, gained strength quickly Wednesday and was upgraded to a major category 4 storm late in the evening after beginning the day as a tropical storm, the National Hurricane Center said.

It had sustained winds of 215 km per hour and was expected to move over open waters in the west-central Atlantic over the next several days, forecasters at the centre said. It was too soon to tell whether any land would be threatened.

Ike is following close on the heels of Tropical Storm Hanna, which was dropped from hurricane to tropical storm status and was aiming for the southeast Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, the centre said.

Hanna was about 260 km from San Salvador, Bahamas at O3OO GMT Thursday and was expected to reach the central or northwest Bahamas in the next few days. Hanna was blamed for at least 19 deaths in Haiti and sent thousands in the Dominican Republic fleeing for refuge Wednesday from the third storm in just a week.

Another storm, Josephine, had weakened over the eastern Atlantic about 605 km west of the Cape Verde Islands.