At least six people are known to be dead and seventy-five injured after a tornado swept through the town of McComb, in the state of Mississippi in the United States on Friday (10 January).

Buildings were demolished, roofs blown off and trees uprooted. The town's armoury was said to be "wiped out" and the hospital's main power supply was broken off. There was also a shortage of ambulances and many of the injured went to the town of Jackson, some sixty miles to the north of McComb, in private cars.

The tornado ripped through three separate schools and also swept school buses into a wood. But thanks to teachers putting children through "disaster drills" as the storm approached many lives were saved.

The authorities in McComb are still digging through the debris left in the wake of the tornado, looking for more dead and injured.