23 people were killed as tornadoes lashed over the US state of Mississippi on Friday night, reports BBC.
More people are thought to be trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
The twisters caused devastation in several rural towns, where trees and power lines were torn down and tens of thousands of power outages were reported.
Several other southern states are also braced for powerful storms.
Hail the size of golf balls and heavy rainfall were reported in several areas of the state.
Residents of Rolling Fork, a small town town in western Mississippi, said that a tornado blew the windows out of the back of their homes. The damage in the area is reported to be particularly bad.
Local resident Brandy Showah told CNN: "I've never seen anything like this... This was a very great small town, and now it's gone."
Cornel Knight told the Associated Press that he, his wife and their three-year-old daughter were at a relative's home in Rolling Fork and that it was "eerily quiet" just before the tornado struck. He said the sky was dark but "you could see the direction from every transformer that blew".
He said the tornado struck another relative's house, where a wall collapsed and trapped several people inside.
Other people were trapped in piles of rubble, while some law enforcement units are unaccounted for in the county of Sharkey.
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
