A weakened Hurricane Sandy lashed the central Bahamas late Thursday with violent winds and torrential rains, after raging through the Caribbean where it caused at least 21 deaths and forced postponement of a hearing at the Guantanamo naval base on Cuba.

State media in Cuba said Sandy toppled houses, ripped off roofs and killed 11 people in the eastern provinces of Santiago and Guantanamo as it roared over the island as a category 2 storm early Thursday. Nine deaths were reported in Haiti and one in Jamaica.

By late Thursday, Sandy had slowed to a category 1 hurricane, but forecasters warned that it will likely blend with a winter storm to cause a super storm in the eastern U.S. next week whose effects will be felt along the entire Atlantic Coast and inland to Ohio.

Some further weakening in Sandy was forecast during the next 48 hours, but it was expected to remain a hurricane.

Late Thursday, the hurricane's center was 185 miles (300 kilometers) east-southeast of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island as it spun between Cat Island and Eleuthera in the central Bahamas. The storm's maximum sustained winds had fallen to 90 mph (150 kph), and Sandy was moving north-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph).

Caroline Turnquest, head of the Red Cross in the Bahamas archipelago off Florida's east coast, said 20 shelters were opened on the main island of New Providence.

"Generally people are realizing it is serious," she said.

Power was out on Acklins Island and most roads there were flooded, government administrator Berkeley Williams said. He said his biggest concern was that a boat filled with basic supplies for the island had to cancel its trip until next week.

"Supplies were low before, so you can imagine what we are going through now," Williams said.

On Ragged Island in the southern Bahamas, the lone school was flooded. "We have holes in roofs, lost shingles and power lines are down," said Charlene Bain, local Red Cross president. "But nobody lost a life, that's the important thing."