A man carrying a child while wading across a flooded street during the passing

of Hurricane Tomas in Leogane, Haiti, yesterday. (AP Picture)

MIAMI Hurricane Tomas, now downgraded to a tropical storm was moving away from the Turks and Caicos Islands on today after swamping coastal towns and killing at least seven people in Haiti.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said that Tomas was 70 miles of Grand Turk Island with sustained winds of 70 miles per hour (mph).

It said that the centre of the storm was moving away from the Turks and Caicos Islands into the open Atlantic.

Relatively speaking, Haiti has escaped the danger, we have to continue to be vigilant, President Rene Preval said, noting however that you can end up surviving the storms, but dying of cholera.

A cholera outbreak in haiti has killed 442 people and infected nearly 6 000 in the last three weeks. The disease is spread through contaminated food and water and can spread quickly in floodwaters.

Civil Protection director, Alta Jean-Baptiste, said four people died in the south-western province of Grande Anse, two in South province and one at Belle Anse in South-East province as a result of the storm.

Scattered flooding was reported in the coastal towns of Les Cayes, Jacmel and Leogane.

In the capital Port-au-Prince, where hundreds of thousands of homeless people live in camps following the January 12 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 and left at least 1.3 million others homeless, huddled under rain-drenched tent and tarpaulin shelters in muddy encampments.

"So far, we seem to have escaped the worst. We've been fortunate it will not be the catastrophic damage we had predicted for Port au Prince," said Nigel Fisher, head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti.

The Royal Navy ship HMS Manchester and a supply vessel, Wave Ruler, were due to arrive off the coast of the Turks and Caicos on Saturday morning.

"There is no doubt that Tomas should be taken seriously," said Governor of the British Overseas Territory, Gordon Wetherell.

NHC said that Tomas would lose strength on Saturday night after passing through the Turks and Caicos Islands and Bahamas carrying winds of around 75mph.