A boy runs past a bus buried in the mud caused by a landslide in Ilopango, eastern El Salvador. (AFP)

Houston, Nov. 9 (Reuters): Hurricane Ida weakened further as it headed towards oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and was forecast to make landfall overnight on the US Gulf Coast, the US National Hurricane Center said today.

Ida was expected to hit somewhere between Louisiana and Florida. Earlier, Ida triggered floods and mudslides that killed 124 people in El Salvador.

Ida’s top sustained winds dropped to 130kmph but could still be a hurricane when it approaches the Gulf Coast later accompanied by heavy rains. Ida was downgraded early today from a Category 2 to a Category 1 hurricane, the lowest rank on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale. US oil companies were shutting production and evacuating workers from the Gulf.

In El Salvador, rivers burst their banks and hillsides collapsed under relentless rains triggered by Ida’s passage, cutting off parts of the mountainous interior from the rest of the country. The bulk of the Central American country’s coffee is grown in areas far from the worst affects of the flooding.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, including the city of New Orleans, which is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency yesterday.