(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-08-21 10:19

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico -- Hurricane Dean strengthened into a monster Category 5 storm on Monday, threatening beach resorts on Mexico's Caribbean coast where thousands of tourists were huddled in makeshift shelters.

A resident checks the damage after Hurricane Dean passed the Bull Bay area in Kingston August 20, 2007. [Reuters]

Dean, which has killed 11 people so far on Caribbean islands, packed howling winds of around 160 mph (256 kph), as it bore down on the Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Police ordered vehicles off the road and supermarket owners boarded up their windows on the "Mayan Riviera," a strip of beach resorts with bright white sands that is yet to fully recover from the devastation of Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

Category 5 is the strongest type of hurricane and can cause widespread damage. Dean was due to make landfall in a marshy area near Mexico's border with Belize early on Tuesday. The state government declared a night curfew in the area.

Four hundred tourists crowded for refuge in a hotel in the resort of Playa del Carmen, with sometimes up to a dozen people per room.

"We're not happy about the conditions," said Kelly Bianchi, 30, a customer service agent and resident of New Orleans. She complained of a lack of information: "They don't tell us anything."

The looming storm brought back nightmare memories of Wilma, the strongest Atlantic storm recorded, which wrecked Cancun and other beach resorts. It washed away whole beaches, killed seven people and caused $2.6 billion in damages.

"A Category 5 is horrible. We've been through that," said Marcos Ruiz, 31, a tourism ministry official in Tulum, just north of Dean's path. "The wind is so strong you can't breathe."

Popular with European tourists, Tulum was particularly in danger as many of its arty hotels and cabins are built next to the sea.

BELIZE THREATENED

Thousands of tourists and local residents were told to go to 2,000 shelters across the Yucatan Peninsula,

The sea around the island of Cozumel, normally busy with yachts, diving boats and cruise ships, was ominously free of vessels as the waves became choppy and the sky darkened.

Mexico is closing and evacuating all of its 407 oil and gas wells in the Campeche Sound due to Hurricane Dean, meaning lost production of 2.65 million barrels of crude per day.

Heavy rain began falling in Belize, a former British colony that is home to some 250,000 people and a famous barrier reef.

The Belizean government encouraged people to move inland and long lines of cars formed the highways heading west toward higher ground in the capital of Belmopan and San Ignacio, a town close to the jungly Guatemalan border.

Dean swiped Jamaica at the weekend with howling winds and pelting rain. Roads were blocked by toppled trees and power poles and police said two people, a 14-year-old girl and a 44-year-old farmer, were killed.

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