Tornadoes and storms kill at least 15 people across parts of US

Powerful storms have killed at least 15 people and left a trail of destruction in their wake as they swept across parts of the central United States.

A tornado tore through a rural area in northern Texas, near the Oklahoma border, on Saturday night, killing at least seven people.

Cooke County sheriff Ray Sappington said two children, aged two and five, were among the victims, with numerous injuries also reported.

He said some of the many trailer homes in the area were “completely gone”, while others suffered massive damage from the storm which left a quarter of a mile-wide path of destruction for three to four miles.

“It’s just a trail of debris left,” he said. “The devastation is pretty severe.”

Storms also killed two people and destroyed houses in Oklahoma, where guests at an outdoor wedding were injured, while at least five people were killed in Arkansas, including a 26-year-old woman.

Elsewhere, a man was killed in Louisville, Kentucky, when a tree fell on him on Sunday.

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The small community of Valley View, a town in Cooke County, where barely 800 people live, was among the hardest hit.

Kevin Dorantes, 20, said he came across a father and son trapped under the debris and friends and neighbours worked to get them out.

“They were conscious but severely injured,” he said. “The father’s leg was snapped.”

He said they managed to carry the father on a mattress to a truck and he and his son were driven to a nearby ambulance.

Hugo Parra said he sheltered with around 40 to 50 people in the bathroom of a truck stop near Valley View as the storm sheared the roof and walls off the building, mangling metal beams and leaving battered cars in the car park.

“The best way to describe this is the wind tried to rip us out of the bathrooms,” he said.

The full scale of the devastation began to come clear on Sunday morning as aerial footage showed dozens of damaged homes, many without roofs and others reduced to rubble, as residents woke up to overturned cars and collapsed garages.

Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power across a large part of the country, including in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas on Sunday, according to poweroutages.us.

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In Indiana, bad weather delayed the start of the famous Indy 500 car race.

More severe weather is expected across parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee, with the National Weather Service warning of damaging winds, large hail and more tornadoes in the affected areas.

April and May have been a busy month for tornadoes, especially in the Midwest, with Iowa hit hard last week, when a deadly twister devastated Greenfield.

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