Hurricane Irene, steamrolling toward a late-in-the-week collision with the US mainland, was expected first to unleash its fury on the holiday destinations of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, US forecasters said Tuesday.

The storm, currently a category two hurricane, is forecast to make landfall in Wilmington, North Carolina over the weekend, a favored beach destination that ordinarily would be packed with tourists for one of the final weekends of summer.

Forecasters from the US National Hurricane Center said that by the time Irene reaches US shores, it is likely to be a much more potent storm, perhaps as high as a category four on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.

At 1200 GMT, the eye of Irene was located 110 kilometers (70 miles) south-southeast of Grand Turk Island, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said.

Tropical storm-force winds extended outward as far as 335 kilometers (205 miles) from the eye of the storm, which was expected to strike the Bahamas late Tuesday and the Turks and Caicos early Wednesday.

Although forecasters said the Carolinas were the likely area for a US landfall, a slight drift in direction could send Irene hurtling up the densely populated US Atlantic coast, with potentially devastating loss of life and property.

"The stakes are high because it would take just a slight shift in the track to the left to make a dramatic change in the impact of the storm in a hugely populated area," said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the NHC.

The storm was packing sustained winds of 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour and moving in a northwesterly direction towards the Turks and Caicos Islands, at around 19 kilometers (12 miles) per hour, skirting the north coast of the Dominican Republic, which shares with Haiti the island of Hispaniola.

Parts of the two-state island were expected to get as much as 25 centimeters (10 inches) of rain.

Fed by warm Atlantic waters, the intensifying storm is expected to whip up ocean swells of as high as 11 feet by the time it reaches the central Bahamas.

"Additional strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours, and Irene could become a major hurricane later today or on Wednesday," the NHC said.

These rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides in areas of steep terrain, the NHC center warned.

Up to 25 centimeters of rainfall, meanwhile, were expected in the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Although it likely will be spared the full force of the storm, impoverished Haiti was under a tropical storm warning and authorities issued a red alert for the quake-ravaged nation.

"Preventative measures are being taken to evacuate people in danger," Haiti meteorological service chief Ronald Semelfort told AFP.

The country was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake in January 2010 that killed an estimated 225,000 people, and then afflicted by a cholera epidemic.

Haiti dodged a weather disaster earlier this month when it was brushed by Tropical Storm Emily, but Irene revived fears for the 300,000 people still living in makeshift camps.

The Dominican Republic set up shelters and ordered that vulnerable areas to be evacuated as it braced for winds and rain from Irene.

The Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) issued an advisory urging necessary precautions to secure property as well as persons.

Meanwhile, Irene ravaged the US territory of Puerto Rico on Monday, leaving nearly a million people in the dark. Clean-up was underway after Irene downed trees and caused flooding in residential areas.

In addition to the blackouts, 118,000 people were without water and nearly a thousand forced to seek refuge in shelters.

Schools were ordered closed and businesses shuttered in some areas, according to Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno, who announced a state of emergency to mobilize aid from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.

After the storm hit, US President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico, a measure which will speed the disbursement of federal aid.

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