A large and powerful Hurricane Irene roared across the Bahamas archipelago on Wednesday, pummeling the country's smaller, less-populated islands while posing less of a threat to the capital, a major tourist destination with 200,000 residents.

A boy runs along the Sanchez Bridge over the Nigua River in San Cristobal, south of Santo Domingo, on Wednesday as winds and rain from Hurricane Irene pound the island of Hispaniola. The rain is causing rivers to overflow, and at least one woman has died in the flooding. [China Daily]

There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or deaths, but property damage appeared likely to be extensive on Acklins and Crooked islands, in the southern part of the chain, said Captain Stephen Russell, director of the country's National Emergency Management Agency.

A settlement known as Lovely Bay was destroyed while at least 40 homes were badly damaged on the island of Mayaguana, the agency said. Authorities were still gathering damage reports and there were few details on the destruction.

Major damage was also anticipated on the island of Eleuthera, which was being battered on Thursday morning, as well as Rum Cay and Cat Island. All were expected to have full and extended exposure to Hurricane Irene's powerful winds, which had weakened slightly on Thursday to 185 kph.

"That can be devastating for some of those islands," Russell said.

The US National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, warned on Thursday that an "extremely dangerous storm surge will raise water levels by as much as 2 to 3 meters above normal tide levels over the Bahamas".

"The surge will be accompanied by large and dangerous waves," and Irene is expected to dump from 15 to 30 centimeters of rain on the islands over the next day and a half, the center said on its website. Irene's core was forecast to continue moving over the northwestern Bahamas on Thursday before heading north toward the US coast, with its current path possibly bringing it to North Carolina's Outer Banks by Saturday afternoon.