CANCUN, Mexico - Hurricane Emily slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula early today as a powerful Category 4 storm, bringing winds of 135 mph and punishing waves to the region's famous white-sand beaches.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Emily made landfall near Tulum - 100 miles south of Cancun. The northern eyewall - where the worst weather would be expected - passed directly over Cozumel, it said.

No deaths or major damage were immediately reported from the storm's landfall. Emily earlier was blamed for four deaths in Jamaica, and two helicopter pilots were killed Sunday while attempting to evacuate an oil rig off the Mexican coast in high winds.

The Category 4 storm knocked out power and phone service to much of Mexico's famous Riviera Maya coastline, where tourists rode out the storm in sweltering, makeshift shelters set up in schools and hotel ballrooms.

Though the storm weakened to a Category 2 hurricane while crossing the peninsula, it was expected to gather strength again after hitting Gulf waters later Monday. A hurricane watch was issued from Cabo Rojo, Mexico, to Baffin Bay, Texas. The brunt of the second landfall was forecast to hit northeast Mexico late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Sunday in Cancun, hundreds of buses moved more than 25,000 people - mostly tourists - to temporary shelters, evacuating them from hotels and low-lying seaside neighborhoods in Cancun being battered by strong waves.

They were among the nearly 60,000 tourists being evacuated statewide from resorts like Tulum, Playa de Carmen and Cozumel, an island famous for its diving. Cancun's airport closed Sunday afternoon after thousands lined up at ticket counters, trying to get flights out before the storm hit.

"We're not going to sleep tonight," Cancun Mayor Francisco Alor said.

Hundreds of mostly foreign tourists lay shoulder-to-shoulder on thin foam pads in a sweltering gymnasium near the center of Cancun. They were given free bottled water and sandwiches, but many gasped when a hard rain rattled the metal roof of the building.

"It's hot in here," said Beth McGhee, 46, a tourist from Independence, Mo. "We feel like we've been kept in the dark until this morning. But we're safe, and that's what's important."

Mexico's state-owned oil company announced Sunday that two pilots were killed in the Gulf of Mexico when their helicopter was downed by strong winds as they tried to land on an offshore oil rig to evacuate workers.

The craft, operated by a contract company, was part of a fleet of 15 ships and 26 helicopters that was working to transfer 15,500 oil workers to shore before Emily crosses the Yucatan peninsula and heads into the Gulf, likely making landfall again sometime Wednesday.

The platform evacuations closed 63 wells and halted the production of 480,000 barrels of oil per day.

By late afternoon Sunday, heavy winds tugged at palm trees and sent the last people at the beach running for their cars. Billboards were toppled by the storm.

Christopher Espinoza, a Cancun resident, braved howling bursts of wind to look out over the angry waves pounding the Cancun seafront. "The waves are already starting to take away part of the beach," he said.

Beach erosion has long been a problem for Cancun, and waves were starting to lap almost at the doorsteps of some hotels.

In Jamaica, which Emily had hit earlier, searchers on Sunday found the four bodies trapped inside a car, which was filled with mud and other debris, police said. A man, a woman, an infant boy and his 5-year-old sister had been driving through a flooded rural road in southwest Jamaica when a surge of water pushed them over a cliff, police said.

Cancun's last big evacuation was for Hurricane Gilbert, which killed some 300 people in Mexico and the Caribbean in 1988. But the city and surrounding resort areas had only about 8,000 hotel rooms then. That number has since grown to over 50,000.