Tornadoes hit southeastern US

At least 10 people have been killed by tornadoes in several southeastern US states.



The state of Mississippi was worst hit, with the governor declaring a state of emergency in 17 counties.



Haley Barbour said there was \"utter obliteration\" in parts of Yazoo county.



Greg Flynn, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said five people were killed in Choctaw county, including two children. Four victims were in Yazoo county and one was in Holmes county.



Thousands of people across the state were without electricity, with fallen power lines and trees blocking roads.



At least four people had been brought to a triage centre at an old discount store parking lot, McArthur Straughter, the Yazoo City mayor, said.



Jim Pollard, a spokesman for American Medical Response ambulance service, said four patients from Yazoo county were airlifted and some 17 others were taken to hospitals.



At least four people were in critical condition.



Devastating nature



In Yazoo City, Malcolm Gordon, 63, stood with members of his family peering through a broken window. Gordon looked around at the devastation.



"It sounded like a train coming down that road," he said.



Gordon and his wife, Diane, hid in a closet while much of the neighborhood was blown away.



More than a dozen people were injured, some critically, roofs were torn off, homes wrecked, vehicles overturned and roads blocked by toppled trees on Saturday.



Jay Gray, a correspondent with the US network NBC, reporting from Yazoo City in Mississippi, told Al Jazeera: \"It is still very much an active emergency scene; rescue teams are still working on the ground here through so much debris and devastation.



\"It is hard to believe that these scenes of destruction stretch for miles and miles across five states at this point, it\'s going to be a very difficult cleanup process for a very long time.\"



Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to move eastward.



The weather hampered crews trying to clean up an oil spill after an explosion on an offshore oil rig caused the platform to sink this week off the coast of Louisiana.



The storms also damaged a tank at a chemical plant in Tallulah, causing a small nitrogen leak.


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