PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos (AP) -- Hurricane Ike damaged most of the homes on Grand Turk island as it roared onto the Bahamas, raked Haiti's flooded cities with rain and threatened the Florida Keys on its way to Cuba as a ferocious Category 4 storm Sunday.

Turks and Caicos premier Michael Misick said Ike damaged more than 80 percent of the homes on Grand Turk and South Caicos islands. Hundreds lost their roofs and all the fishermen lost boats as the hurricane made a near-direct hit.

Hundreds took refuge in shelters. Others have been cowering in closets and under stairwells and "just holding on for life. They got hit really, really bad," Misick said Sunday morning. "A lot of people have lost their house, and we will have to see what we can do to accommodate them."

At 8 a.m. EDT, Ike's eye was just east of Great Inagua Island in the southeastern Bahamas, with maximum sustained winds of 135 mph (215 kph). It was moving west-southwest at 14 mph (24 kph) and was expected to remain a major hurricane as it approaches eastern Cuba.

"It's looking terrible," said reserve police officer Henry Nixon from inside a shelter on the Bahamas' Great Inagua Island, where about 85 people huddled around a radio. "All we can do is hunker down and pray."