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Tornadoes rake four southern US states, 47 killed

People walk past damage at a Caterpillar plant in Oxford, Mississippi on Tuesday. At least two tornadoes hit north Mississippi on Tuesday, tearing through buildings and ripping down power lines, officials said. PHOTO: AP/BRUCE NEWMAN, OXFORD EAGLE

Tornadoes and thunderstorms ravaged four states in the US south on Tuesday night, killing at least 47 people, injuring dozens and causing widespread damage, emergency services and local media said yesterday.

Twenty-four people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas and 1 in Alabama, CNN reported. Local officials would not immediately confirm the tolls.

More than 50 tornadoes touched down as a series of thunderstorms rare for the winter season rolled through the region late on Tuesday and early yesterday.

The violent storms swept across Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. Both Arkansas and Tennessee were involved in "Super Tuesday" polls and several candidates expressed condolences to the victims.

Several polling stations in Tennessee and Arkansas had to be closed as the storm approached, reports said.

In Arkansas, emergency services said tornadoes hit as many as eight counties.

"It's a pretty rough night in the scope of it. I don't know if I can remember when we've had as many [tornado] warnings and touchdowns," Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said in a telephone interview from an emergency operations center in North Little Rock.

The governor's spokesman, Matt DeCample, said there was "no clue" as to how many were injured.

At least three people were killed at a mobile home park in Kentucky, the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper reported.

The Nashville Tennessean said that the National Weather Service had recorded a half dozen tornadoes in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Extensive damage in Tennessee included part of a shopping mall in Memphis and a dormitory at Union University in Jackson, where some students were trapped for a time but not seriously injured, the Web site of Memphis' Commercial Appeal said.

The paper quoted a National Weather Service spokesman as saying that the Memphis area had been hit by a "pretty significant tornado."

ABC affiliate WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi reported that a 15m wall had collapsed at the Sears store in the Hickory Ridge Mall in Memphis and that an unknown number of people were trapped in a nearby industrial plant.
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