After slamming onto Mexico's Caribbean coast as a monstrous category five storm Tuesday, Dean was downgraded to category one as it pushed back out into the Gulf to pound Mexico's offshore oil platforms.

Despite the rare intensity the storm packed when it hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before dawn Tuesday, ripping trees out of the ground and causing floods, there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The powerful gusts shattered windows and destroyed bus shelters, cut electricity to a vast area and sent tens of thousands of people fleeing for safer ground.

Authorities in neighboring Belize said the small Central American country did suffer some damage to buildings, but did not report any deaths.

Dean had killed at least nine people during its earlier rampage across the Caribbean.

When it hit Mexico however, the worst of the storm hit lightly populated areas, sparing popular tourist resorts and causing no major structural damage in cities near its point of entry.

The hurricane lost much of its power as it swirled across the Yucatan Peninsula but forecasters said it could regain strength from the warm Gulf waters as it headed toward central Mexico for a second landfall.

President Felipe Calderon arrived on the Yucatan Peninsula to survey the damage, after expressing concern over the fate of isolated and impoverished Mayan communities along its path. He also pledged that relief efforts would focus on those areas.

"So far there have been no reports of human losses," Calderon said.

The monster storm pounded a sparsely populated area near Puerto Bravo, about 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of the tourist resort of Cancun, packing sustained winds of 270 kilometers (165 miles) per hour, with higher gusts.

That made it the first Atlantic hurricane to make landfall at the topmost category five on the Saffir-Simpson scale since Andrew rampaged in south Florida in 1992.

Tens of thousands of tourists had fled Cancun and other popular resorts ahead of the storm, but those who stayed behind enjoyed a sunny day Tuesday, though most steered clear of the still stormy seas.

In Chetumal, a city of 450,000 people close to the landfall area, electricity was down, uprooted trees blocked roads and officials said floodwaters were as high as two meters (six-and-a-half feet) in a low-lying part of town.

"I was very scared, the wind made a horrible sound as it hit the corrugated metal roof," said Rosa Ramirez, 16, who spent the night huddled in a small house with 14 family members. At one stage the family also feared they had lost 10 sheep who had run away, but the animals were later rounded up unharmed.

In the nearby village of Bacala, hundreds of dead or dying birds littered the ground.

Meanwhile world oil prices dipped on Tuesday as the storm remained on course to spare key energy facilities in the United States, the world's biggest consumer of crude.

State-run Petroleos de Mexico (PEMEX) earlier evacuated all 18,000 personnel from its offshore oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico. Calderon said the evacuations caused the loss of two-and-a-half million barrels of crude by Tuesday.

At 0800 GMT Wednesday, Dean's center was about 190 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Veracruz and 280 kilometers (175 miles) east-southeast of Tuxpan, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

"Some intensification is possible before landfall," the center said, adding it was expected to be "very near the coast of central Mexico" Wednesday where 2.5 meter (eight-foot) tidal surges and up to 25 centimeters (10 inches) of rain were likely.

Its maximum sustained winds were down to 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour, making it at category one hurricane, the lowest intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Before it hit Mexico, Hurricane Dean was blamed for four deaths in Haiti, two in the Dominican Republic, two in Martinique and one in Jamaica.

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