The death toll following a major storm system which struck the South and the Midwest on Friday rose to 18 people on Saturday with dozens of other injuries reported. Dozens of tornadoes were reported to have struck the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin and Mississippi, according to the National Weather Service.
On Friday more than 28 million people were under tornado watches, the service said, which also warned of a rare "high risk" watch for severe storms in some parts of the South and the Midwest.
Homes and businesses were destroyed in the wake of the catastrophic storms. The roof at a concert venue in Belvidere, Illinois collapsed during the storm, killing one person and inuring at least 28 people who required hospital treatment, five of whom sustained serious injuries.
Of the 11 people who have died, five were reported in Arkansas, with three deaths in Indiana, one in Illinois, one in Alabama and one in Mississippi, the news outlet said. Later in the day, seven more people were reported dead in southern Tennessee's McNairy County, bringing the total death toll to 18, the USA Today reported.
By Saturday afternoon hundreds of thousands of US residents were still without power in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. According to PowerOutage.us in Ohio more than 263,000 were left without power, as well as 238,000 in Pennsylvania, 94,000 in Tennessee, 58,000 in Kentucky and about 55,000 in West Virginia as the storm moved northeast.
Earlier in the day, media reported that a tornado hit Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas and the state's most populated city, severely damaging and destroying many houses. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard, pledging to spare no effort to restore the state.