At least 18 people, including two children, have been killed in powerful storms that ravaged the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas in the central US, destroying homes and plunging thousands into darkness amid rising temperatures. Seven fatalities were reported in Cooke County in Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado on Saturday night ripped through a rural area near a mobile home park, officials said.
“It’s just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington said. The dead included two children, aged two and five, and three members of a family, the sheriff said. Sappington said the death toll was likely to rise as search and rescue operations were underway for some people who remained missing on Sunday morning.
