A woman walks along the sea at Cancun beach, Mexico. The red flag is to alert for the near arrival of category five hurricane Wilma. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

Hurricane Wilma has reached a maximum category of five on the Saffir-Simpson scale and is heading toward Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the Cuban Meteorological Institute said on Wednesday.

Wilma, with winds of 280 kph, reached a category 5 from a category 1 in just 12 hours, the institute said.

Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua have all declared hurricane alerts.

In Haiti, the torrential rain that accompanied Wilma triggered landslides, killing 10 people, while in Jamaica, one person was swept away by floodwaters and drowned. As in eastern Cuba, intense rains displaced more than 9,000 people.

Although Wilma is now heading for Yucatan, a tourist resort in southeastern Mexico hit by hurricanes in June, it could change course toward either Florida, the United States, or the Gulf of Mexico, the Cuban Meteorologists said.

At 6:00 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) Wednesday, hurricane Wilma was 143 km southeast of the Cayman Islands, or around 590 km southeast of Cozumel, Mexico.

Wilma was the 21st named tropical cyclone in this Atlantic hurricane season, tying the record set in 1933 as the busiest hurricane season in history.

Source: Xinhua