Hurricane Dorian makes landfall in northern Bahamas as category 5 storm

Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the northern Bahamas on Sunday afternoon as a 'catastrophic' Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 297 kmph, National Hurricane Center said.

The storm struck the southern end of Elbow Cay at around 2 pm (local time). With gusts of over 321 kmph, Dorian has become "the strongest hurricane in modern records for the northwestern Bahamas," the Centre said, as cited by CNN.

The hurricane is moving westward with a relatively slower speed of about 11 kmph and is threatening to strike the US East Coast on Monday evening.

The northern Bahamas could get 12 to 30 inches of rain as a result of the storm, and a life-threatening storm surges of 18 to 23 feet could crash into the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama, the hurricane center said.

A state of emergency has been declared in Florida and the state government has urged US President Donald Trump to declare a pre-landfall disaster for all of the state's 67 counties.