Storms claim 26 lives in southern US

Authorities in the US were today searching for victims of tornadoes that killed at least 26 people across four states.

The dead included 12 people in Tennessee, 11 in Arkansas, and a mother and father who died in Kentucky with their adult daughter.

Those killed in Arkansas included another set of parents, who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock.

The family died when the storm their home “took a direct hit” from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said.

“Neighbours and friends who were there said, ’There used to be a home there,” Mr Krout said.

The twisters, which also slammed Mississippi, were part of a line of storms that raged across the country’s midsection at the end of the Super Tuesday primaries in several states.

As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.

Northeast of Nashville, Tennessee, a spectacular fire erupted at a petrol station northeast of Nashville that authorities said could have been damaged by the storms. An unknown number of people were reported dead.

Eight students were trapped in a battered dormitory at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, until they were finally freed.

Rescuers went through shattered homes in Atkins, a small town near the Arkansas River.

In Memphis, high winds collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a shopping centre. Debris that included bricks and air conditioning units was scattered on the car park, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.

A few people north of the centre took shelter under a bridge and were washed away, but they were pulled out of the Wolf River with only scrapes, said Steve Cole of the Memphis Police Department.

In Mississippi, Desoto County Sheriff’s Department Steve Atkinson said a twister shredded warehouses in an industrial park in the city of Southaven, just south of Memphis.

“It ripped the warehouses apart. The best way to describe it is it looks like a bomb went off,” Atkinson said.

The couple killed with their adult daughter were in their mobile home near Greenville in western Kentucky when a tornado went through their caravan park.