As hundreds of tornadoes create devastation and turmoil across the nation, the number of people killed by storms in the South and Midwest of the United States has risen once more.
As a result of catastrophic weather that uprooted trees and tore the roof off an overflowing music venue in Illinois, at least 26 people were murdered in large cities and small towns spread across eight states.
Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, was among the locations affected. According to city officials, one tornado’s path passed through more than 2,600 buildings there.
In one Tennessee county, at least nine people were killed, while three deaths were recorded in Sullivan, Indiana, and four in Illinois.
Other people were also reported to have died as a result of the storms in Alabama and Mississippi.
In Wynne, a small town with a population of around 8,000 people located 50 miles west of Memphis in Tennessee, the death toll was four.
The local high school was seriously damaged by the weather, with the roof torn off and windows blown out.
Local woman Ashley Macmillan said she huddled with her family and dogs in a small bathroom as the storm passed, ‘praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead’.
The family was unhurt, although a falling tree damaged their home.
A 50-year-old man died shortly after being pulled out of rubble after part of the Apollo Theatre’s roof collapsed during a heavy metal concert in Belvidere, Illinois.
Gabrielle Lewellyn, who was at the gig, told WTVO-TV: ‘I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him), ‘It’s going to be okay.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do.’
Officials said 40 others were hurt in the incident, including two with life-threatening injuries.
Tennessee governor Bill Lee said the storm had capped the ‘worst’ week of his time in office.
It came just days after a school shooting in Nashville that killed six people, including a family friend whose funeral he and his wife attended earlier in the day.
Yesterday, after driving to McNairy County where at least nine people died, he said: ‘It’s terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state.
‘But it looks like your community has done what Tennessean communities do, and that is rally and respond.’
Dozens of people were killed in Mississippi last weekend during the first wave of deadly tornadoes in the region, while a storm in Georgia led to a pair of tigers escaping their enclosure at a zoo.