"We saw homes flying through the air with people still inside," said Reinaldo Francis, the governor of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, on the Caribbean coast.

A baby died shortly after birth in the worst-hit city of Puerto Cabezas, Health Minister Maritza Cuan said, adding that the girl's mother had refused to head to a shelter ahead of the storm.

One man was killed when his home collapsed on top of him and another died when he fell from a roof he was repairing as the storm rolled in, officials said.

The body of a man from the Sandy Bay coastal community was found floating in the ocean several hours after the hurricane roared ashore in northeastern Nicaragua, packing maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers (160 miles) per hour.

Neighboring Honduras also braced for trouble as Felix headed its way Tuesday evening as a much weakened hurricane but one that could still trigger massive floods and potentially deadly mudslides.

The storm rekindled bitter memories of Hurricane Mitch, one of the deadliest on record, which devastated the region and killed at least 9,000 people, most of them in Nicaragua and Honduras, in 1998.

"The situation is serious, but thank God the number of victims is not as high as those caused by Hurricane Mitch," Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said at a news conference.

Tuesday's landfall marked the first time on record that two Atlantic hurricanes hit land at the topmost category five on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, after Hurricane Dean slammed into Mexico on August 21.

"Puerto Cabezas is destroyed, everywhere there are smashed homes and churches, downed trees and power lines," Francis told AFP.

In a region where an estimated 200,000 people live in abject poverty, many of the city's homes were made of wood and tin.

"We are in a bad way, roads are impassible, people are alarmed, they have no power, no water and many have nothing to eat," the regional governor said.

Authorities said an airport control tower collapsed and several neighborhoods were flooded.

More than 30,000 people in Puerto Cabezas reportedly did not heed calls to head to safety before the hurricane barreled ashore.

"We left the house because the storm tore off the tin roof, the house got flooded and trees were falling. We stayed in the street," a resident told a local radio station.

At the height of the storm, authorities received distress calls from fishing vessels with dozens of people aboard. "There is nothing we can do for them now," Ramon Arnesto Soza, the head of the government's disaster response agency Sinapred, told Radio Ya.

The storm lost most of its punch as it traveled inland, but Honduras feared torrential rains were likely to trigger mudslides and cause rivers to overflow.

Authorities ordered 10,000 people to evacuate threatened areas of Tegucigalpa on Tuesday as revised forecasts indicated the hurricane would move much closer to the Honduran capital than initially thought.

More evacuations were ordered in other parts of the country and hundreds of tourists were earlier taken to safety by air and sea from the islands of Roatan and Guanaja, which are popular with scuba divers.

At 2100 GMT, the center of the hurricane was located 175 kilometers (110 miles) west of Puerto Cabezas. Maximum sustained winds decreased to 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour, which put Felix at category one, the lowest on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Mexico, which was already battered by Hurricane Dean two weeks ago, got a renewed pounding Tuesday, this time on its Pacific Coast, as Hurricane Henriette's swirled over the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, a popular tourist destination.

At 2100 GMT, Henriette had maximum sustained winds of 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour.

related report
Historic first as two topmost hurricanes land in same year
For the first time on record, two Atlantic hurricanes have made landfall at category five in the same year as Hurricane Felix slammed ashore Tuesday at the topmost intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, according to data from the US National Hurricane Center.

The powerful storm roared ashore in northeastern Nicaragua with maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers (160 miles) per hour, and higher gusts, before weakening to a category three hurricane, said the Miami-based NHC.

Its landfall marked the first time two hurricanes hit land at the topmost category in the same year since a storm was first reliably recorded at that intensity in 1928.

Dean, this year's first hurricane, hit Mexico's Caribbean coast at category five on August 21. Its rampage through the Caribbean and Mexico left 30 people dead.

Hurricane Felix had reached category five on Sunday, when it strengthened from a category two in a record 15 hours, according to the NHC. It dropped to category four on Monday but regained strength just before landfall.

Only 30 previous Atlantic hurricanes are reliably known to have reached category five, starting with a 1928 storm nicknamed Okeechobee that left a trail of death and devastation in the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Florida.

Among the storms to reach category five was Hurricane Mitch, which in 1998 devastated the same area now battered by Felix.

While Mitch made landfall as a category one hurricane, its slow motion meant it dropped massive amounts of rain over Honduras and Nicaragua, causing catastrophic flooding and becoming one of the deadliest hurricanes in history, with more than 9,000 people dead and as many reported missing.

In 2005, a record four Atlantic hurricanes reached category five, including Hurricane Katrina that left 1,500 people dead in New Orleans and along the US Gulf coast. Katrina made landfall as a category three hurricane, with sustained winds of 205 kilometers (125 miles) per hour.

A category five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale packs maximum sustained winds of over 249 kilometers (155 miles) per hour. The NHC calls such hurricanes "potentially catastrophic."