Local media reported 17 fishermen and women had been stranded on the Pedro Cays, a small island chain, directly in the path of the hurricane. There was no further word on them.
HURRICANE WARNINGS
Hurricane warnings were in effect for the coast of Belize and the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, all the way to the popular tourist destination of Cancun.
Thousands of frightened tourists on Mexico's Caribbean coast stood in line for hours at airports to flee before Dean's expected arrival.
The latest computer tracking models forecast the hurricane would spare the U.S. Gulf Coast but cross the Yucatan to the Bay of Campeche and then hit central Mexico.
Four people were killed in Haiti, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, putting the number killed at nine since Dean roared into the Caribbean as the first hurricane of what is expected to be a busy 2007 storm season.
Risk modeling company EQECAT Inc. estimated insured losses from Dean's rampage through the Caribbean islands at $1.5 billion to $3 billion, most of it in Jamaica.
Dean was being watched closely by energy markets, which have been nervous since a series of storms in 2004 and 2005 toppled Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, flooded refineries and cut pipelines.
Mexico's Pemex oil company began evacuating 13,360 workers from its Gulf rigs.
The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour got ready to head back to Earth from the International Space Station a day early in case the storm forces NASA to evacuate its Houston center.
Category 5 hurricanes are rare but in 2005 there were four, including Katrina, reinforcing research that suggests global warming may increase the strength of tropical cyclones.
