The strongest Atlantic hurricane in more than a decade may have battered an estimated 1.2 million people and it poses a serious threat to millions more, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Thursday.
The IFRC said in a statement from Geneva that at least 10 people are believed to have been killed.
“Our worst fears have played out in Barbuda and elsewhere,” said Walter Cotte, the IFRC’s regional director for the Americas.
Category 5 Hurricane Irma has cut a swath of destruction through half a dozen Caribbean nations and foreign territories in the past 24 to 36 hours.
Irma is now bearing down on the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba, where an estimated 26 million people could be exposed to destructive winds and torrential rain.
