MEXICO CITY, Oct 22 (Xinhuanet) -- As Hurricane Wilma flooded Mexico's Caribbean beach resorts and killed at least two people on Saturday, a new tropical storm was reported to form in the west of the Caribbean, challenging various countries in the region.

    Wilma, packed with winds of 185 kph, collapsed homes, uprooted trees and confined thousands of tourists to shelters for a third day on Saturday.

    Two people were dead when a gas tank exploded during the storm at the resort town of Playa del Carmen in southeast Mexico, a local official said.

    The storm ripped off electricity and telephone lines, and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the town.

    In the tourist resort of Cancun, the slow-moving storm put the city under 1.5-meter-deep water, which reached the third story of some hotels near the beach, the newspaper Diario de Yucatan reported. Most buildings were damaged.

    "Never in history have we seen something like this," a Mexican state governor told CNN.

    Officials said they had little information about damage because Wilma's howling winds made investigations almost impossible.

    Mexican President Vicente Fox planned to travel to the affected region on Sunday. In a taped address to the nation, he said that while the government is taking care of the thousands of stranded tourists, it has not forgotten the citizens.

    The army and navy are already preparing emergency supplies, including food, water, medicine and roofing, in various southern cities. Fox said they will be sent in as soon as possible.

    Wilma has already killed 13 people across the Caribbean. The torrential rains it brought rendered 360,000 people homeless in Cuba.

    The US southeast state of Florida is possibly Wilma's next target. The hurricane has already lost some strength, but is still strong enough to cause massive damage and take more lives.

    The US authorities ordered mandatory evacuations on Saturday, starting with 80,000 residents in the vulnerable Florida Keys.

    Meanwhile, a tropical depression has formed off the coast of the Dominican Republic, and will develop into a tropical storm on Saturday, a Cuban meteorological center reported.

    During the process, the eastern parts of Cuba will be lashed bytorrential rains or a storm.

    At 5:00 p.m. local time (2100 GMT), the center of the storm was located about 200 km south-southeast of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, with maximum sustained winds of nearly 65 kph,the Miami hurricane center said.

    Cuba's civil defense departments have put five eastern states on alert.

    The hurricane season this year is one of the worst in recent years. In August, Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,200 people in New Orleans in the southern United States.

    As Wilma is the last name on the official storm list, the new storm will be dubbed Alpha, a Greek alphabet that has not been used in roughly 60 years to name storms. Enditem