US rescue teams are fanning out to search isolated rural homes in Mississippi after a tornado swept through, killing at least 10 people.

They are checking areas they were unable to reach in the first hours after Saturday's devastating storm, state Governor Haley Barbour said.

At least 100 houses suffered severe damage in Yazoo County alone, he added.

Meteorologists say it is too soon to tell whether one single tornado or multiple, briefer ones hit the state.

Wind speeds in Mississippi were put at about 150mph (240km/h).

Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to move north-eastward on Sunday, as gusty winds downed trees in north-west Georgia, the Associated Press news agency reports.

In all, eight states were placed on tornado watch.

'I was levitated'

National Guard soldiers patrolled Yazoo City early on Sunday, which dawned sunny and still. Some rode in Humvees, others used a Blackhawk helicopter.


Damaged house in Meehan area in Lauderdale County, Miss

In pictures: Mississippi tornado

Dozens of volunteer state troopers and other law enforcement officers were arriving from other parts of the state to help with the relief operation.

Yazoo, which has a population of 28,000 and is known in the US for blues music, catfish and cotton, was hit particularly badly by the storm.

Governor Barbour, who grew up there, talked of "utter obliteration" among the picturesque hills rising from the flat Mississippi Delta.

"This tornado was enormous," he told AP in Yazoo City. Around him stretched snapped trees, toppled houses and random debris.

Ron Sullivan, who owns a grocery store in Choctaw County's pine forestland, found the building's wooden roof torn off and its cinderblock walls reduced to heaps of stone when he inspected it on Sunday.

At the moment the tornado struck, he had been on the phone to a National Weather Service meteorologist who wanted to know what the conditions were.

map

"Something's happening, and it's happening now," he recalled telling the meteorologist.

Then the phone went dead and Mr Sullivan was lifted off his feet.

"I was levitated and flew 15ft [4.5m] over there to the back wall," he said. "The only reason I wasn't killed was the wall was still there. After I hit it, it collapsed."
His wife hid behind a chest freezer which probably saved her life, as a large steel storage tank was uprooted and rolled into the store, coming to rest against the freezer.

Five victims, including three children, were killed in Choctaw County, with four deaths reported in Yazoo County and one in Holmes County.