A tornado had hit a city on the US-Maxico border which leaves 13 dead on Monday, said authority.
The deadliest tornado had destroyed homes, throw cars into sky and ripping an infant away from its mother.
In Texas, 12 people were reported missing after the vacation home they were staying in was swept away by rushing floodwaters in a small town popular with tourists.
Interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila Victor Zamora said that a baby was also missing after the twister that hit Ciudad Acuna, a city of 125,000 across from Del Rio, Texas, ripped the child’s carrier from the mother’s hands and sent it flying.
Rescue workers dug through the rubble of damaged homes in a race to find victims. The twister hit a seven-block area, which Zamora described as “devastated”.
Mayor Evaristo Perez Rivera said 300 people were being treated at local hospitals, and up to 200 homes had been completely destroyed. Three people were unaccounted for.
Spokesperson for city government Edgar Gonzalez said, “There’s nothing standing, not walls, not roofs.”
He also described some of the destroyed homes in a one square mile stretch.
By midday, 13 people were confirmed dead – 10 adults and three infants.
Family members and neighbours gathered around a pickup truck where the bodies of a woman and two children were laid out in the truck’s bed, covered with sheets. Two relatives reached down to touch the bodies, covered their eyes and wept.
In the US, a line of storms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes dumped record rainfall on parts of the Plains and Midwest, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding that forced at least 2,000 Texans from their homes.
The storms were blamed for five deaths on Saturday and Sunday, including two in Oklahoma and three in Texas.
Bureau Report
Leave a Reply