Laura strengthens into a hurricane and expected to slam Texas and Louisiana

Hundreds of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate the Gulf coast on Tuesday, as Laura strengthened into a hurricane that forecasters said could slam into Texas and Louisiana as a major storm with ferocious winds and deadly flooding.

Laura passed Cuba after killing nearly two dozen on the island of Hispaniola, 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused intense flooding.

More than 385,000 were told to flee the Texas cities of Beaumont, Galveston and Port Arthur, and still more were ordered to evacuate low-lying south-western Louisiana, where forecasters said as much as 13ft of storm surge topped by waves could submerge entire communities.