Islam Times - Hurricane Sandy lands in New Jersey, 13 people killed recently

Islam Times - Hurricane Sandy has made landfall along the coast of southern New Jersey in the United States, having killed at least 12 people in the US and one person in Canada in the most recent past.

The US National Hurricane Center said on Monday that the megastorm made its landfall near Atlantic City about 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time and had maximum sustained winds of about 80mph (129km/h).

Sandy, now a post-tropical cyclone, brought hurricane-force winds and heavy rains to a wide swathe of the US East Coast.

According to US officials, twelve people lost their lives in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and North Carolina while Canadian police also said that a woman was killed in Toronto as a result of being hit with flying debris.

The storm plunged more than 3 million people into darkness, about half of them in New York and New Jersey. It also forced the shutdown of public transit, schools, airlines, and financial markets in the East Coast’s largest cities.

The National Weather Service predicted "historic and life-threatening coastal flooding" through Tuesday morning, with the greatest danger coming at high tide.

Reports say that lower Manhattan has gone under water with subways and car tunnels filled with seawater.

Sandy has been described as a hybrid "super storm" created by an Arctic jet stream wrapping itself around a tropical storm.

The storm has killed a total of at least 78 people since Wednesday, most of them in Haiti as it was charging through the Caribbean.