Tropical Storm Gustav 3-day forecast track. NHC/NOAA graphic

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AFP): Tropical Storm Gustav regained hurricane strength as it churned toward Cuba Friday, leaving 78 people dead in its wake, as New Orleans began voluntary evacuations ahead of the storm's projected arrival next week.

Jamaica was rocked by the storm which killed at least 11 people on the mountainous island, as people on the US Gulf Coast hurried storm preparations exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the region.

The system ripped through the Dominican Republic and Haiti earlier this week, then thrashed Jamaica, beginning its rampage as a Category One hurricane before weakening to a tropical storm, then regaining hurricane strength.

At 5 pm the eye of Gustav was located about 100 miles east of Grand Cayman and 380 miles east-southeast of the western tip of Cuba.

The storm was packing winds of 75 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

"Gustav is a Category One hurricane on the (five-level) Saffir-Simpson scale. Strengthening is forecast during the next couple of days... and Gustav could become a major hurricane near the time it crosses western Cuba."

Gustav was moving in a north-west direction at 12 miles per hour, and on this track will pass "near or over the Cayman Islands... over the western portions of Cuba on Saturday, and into the southern Gulf of Mexico (late) Saturday or Sunday."

It is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of six to 12 inches across Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and western Cuba, with isolated deluges of up to 25 inches possible.

"These rains will likely produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides," the National Hurricane Center said.

In Jamaica, Prime Minister Bruce Golding told reporters Friday that the storm killed 11 and displaced between 3,500 and 4,000 people.

"I am concerned that there are still a number of persons who are still unaccounted for," Golding said.

He added that some schools would begin the school year a few days late because they were being used to house displaced people.

Streets in the normally bustling capital Kingston were soaked and reeking with the stench from overflowing sewer water.

Gustav's powerful gusts sent metal roofs flying and threatened to wreak havoc on the island's banana industry, officials said.

Even though the heaviest of the rains had subsided, many Jamaicans worried about returning home. "It is all wet and I am afraid to sleep inside there," said Kingston housewife Charlene Markland.

Gustav was now bearing down on Cuba, where a fragile and aging housing stock is highly vulnerable to hurricanes. More than two million people live in the capital Havana, where many colonial era buildings, crowded with families, are prone to cave-ins after heavy rains.

Authorities in Cuba, the only communist country in the Americas, are famed for well-organized evacuation operations but acknowledge the dangers precarious homes pose.

Meanwhile a separate system, Tropical Storm Hanna, churned northeast of the northern Leeward Islands and could become a hurricane in a few days, the NHC said. On its current path Hanna could be over Cuba by the middle of next week.