Hurricane Cuts Off Mexico Isle, Closes Oil Ports : Weather: Cozumel, off Yucatan Peninsula, is hit by Roxanne’s 115-m.p.h. winds. There is no reported loss of life.

Hurricane Roxanne battered Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday, cutting off the exclusive resort island of Cozumel, forcing the evacuation of thousands of tourists from the beaches of Cancun and suspending all Mexican oil exports until further notice.

Red Cross, civil defense and Mexican army officials in contact with Cozumel by radio said there were no reports of deaths or widespread damage after the hurricane slammed into the low-lying island in the Caribbean Sea with 115-m.p.h. winds and 13-foot waves. Telephone links with Cozumel were cut, and plane and ferry services suspended.

The upscale resort city of Cancun also was spared heavy damage, and an estimated 10,000 evacuated vacationers and 4,000 employees left emergency shelters to return to luxury hotels after the storm passed.

“The hurricane hit Cancun with a lot of force--a lot of rain and wind--and sent street signs and branches flying, but luckily there was no serious damage,” said Juana Guadalupe Santin, director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Cancun. “But it’s been sunny most of the day, so I imagine people have returned to their homes.”

The storm began to lose strength crossing the peninsula late Wednesday, but the Red Cross and federal relief agencies remained on high alert as Roxanne headed toward the states of Veracruz and Tabasco--the heart of Mexico’s vital petroleum industry.

Hurricane warnings also remained in effect along the entire coastline from the Yucatan port of Progreso across the Bay of Campeche to the east coast city of Tuxpan in Veracruz, and the government announced that 38 seaports in the area were officially closed.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami predicted that Roxanne would gather strength as it approached Veracruz and warned of flash floods, heavy rain and a possible storm surge along much of Mexico’s Gulf coastline.

On Mexico’s Pacific coast, there was grimmer news from rescue crews digging through the remains of a luxury hotel that collapsed when a 7.6 earthquake struck near the resort town of Manzanillo on Monday.

The death toll at the Costa Real hotel rose to at least 25 on Wednesday after four more bodies were pulled from the rubble, and civil defense officials reported that 16 people were still officially listed as missing--among them tourists and staff who were inside the eight-story hotel when it imploded.

The discoveries brought the total death count to at least 50, and workers at the scene said they had little hope of finding any survivors. They said a listening device lowered into air pockets deep inside the wreckage yielded no signs of life.

Amid protests from local opposition politicians, federal officials said they will formally investigate why the hotel was permitted to reopen after suffering major damage in an 8.1 quake in 1985.