Tornadoes kill dozens, threaten Georgia

TUPELO, Mississippi (AP):

After spawning deadly tornadoes that flattened homes and businesses in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, a storm system that also caused havoc in the Midwest had Georgia in its sights early yesterday.

At least 11 people in the South were killed on Monday, bringing the overall death toll from two days of severe weather to at least 28.

In Mississippi, Republican state Senator Giles Ward huddled in a bathroom with his wife, four other family members and their dog on Monday, as a tornado destroyed his two-storey brick house and flipped his son-in-law's SUV upside down onto the patio in Louisville.

"For about 30 seconds, it was unbelievable," Ward said. "It's about as awful as anything we've gone through."

The dangerous weather jangled nerves a day after the three-year anniversary of a historic outbreak of more than 60 tornadoes that killed more than 250 people across Alabama on April 27, 2011.