The southern half of Florida has been put under a hurricane warning Sunday as Hurricane Wilma speeds up toward the southeastern US state with 167 kph winds.

After lashing the Caribbean region for several days, Wilma left Mexico's Yucatan peninsula as a Category 2 storm early in the day and began accelerating toward Florida.

The hurricane will likely come ashore earlier Monday, threatening Florida's southwest coast and islands with strong winds, tornadoes and tide surges that could cause flooding in low-lying lands in these areas.

Max Mayfield, director of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, said Wilma will dramatically pick up speed as it approaches Florida.

"It's really going to take off like a rocket," he said.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush on Sunday urged residents living in the path of Wilma to evacuate and seek shelter.

He said the southern half of the state has already been under ahurricane warning, and an estimated number of 160,000 residents are persuaded to evacuate, although many in the low-lying Florida Keys island chain decided to stay.

"I cannot emphasize enough to the folks that live in the Florida Keys a hurricane is coming, and a hurricane is a hurricane and it has deadly force winds," Bush said at a news conference.

Wilma has hit Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, killing at least eight people in tourist resorts before moving northeast towards Cuba and Florida.

The southern part of the United States has already experienced four hurricanes this year.

The second, Hurricane Katrina which hit the US Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, is the worst natural disaster on record in the country's history.

To preparing for the Wilma, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has assembled 150 truckloads of ice and 150 truckloads of water, and the US Red Cross has 200,000 meals available.

The Florida state government has already declared a state of emergency Thursday, and has prepared food, water, ice and other supplies and disaster-response teams including up to 7,500 National Guard members standing by.

At 1800 GMT Sunday, the storm was about 390 km southwest of Key West, Florida.

Tropical storm-force winds of at least 68 kph are expected to begin lashing the state late Sunday, and the core of the hurricane will likely blow across the peninsula Monday.

Source: Xinhua