Deadly tornado hits Mexico border city killing 13

A tornado has swept through a Mexican border city, killing at least 13 people, authorities said.

Damaged homes stand next to others that were razed when a powerful tornado touched down in Ciudad Acuna, northern Mexico. Image by (AP Photo)

A baby is also missing after the storm that hit Ciudad Acuna, a city of 125,000 across the border from Del Rio in Texas, ripped the child’s carrier from the mother’s hands and sent it flying, said Victor Zamora, interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila.

Rescue workers dug through the rubble of damaged homes in a race to find victims. The twister hit a seven-block area, which Mr Zamora described as “devastated”.

Mayor Evaristo Perez Rivera said 300 people were being treated at local hospitals, and up to 200 homes had been completely destroyed.

“There’s nothing standing, not walls, not roofs,” said Edgar Gonzalez, a spokesman for the city government, describing the worst-hit square mile stretch.

Ten adults and three infants have been confirmed dead, with at least five people unaccounted for.

Ms Gonzalez said rescuers were looking for four members of a family who are believed missing, adding that there are still areas of rubble that remain to be searched.

A damaged car sits on a road in Ciudad Acuna, northern Mexico, Monday, May 25, 2015, after a powerful tornado touched down. Image by (AP Photo)

Photos from the scene showed cars with their bonnets torn off, resting upended against single-storey houses. One car’s frame was bent around the gate of a house. A bus was seen flipped and crumpled on a road.

The twister struck not long after daybreak, around the time buses were preparing to take children to school, Mr Zamora said.

Across the border in Texas, 12 people were reported missing after the vacation home they were staying in was swept away by rushing floodwaters in a small town popular with tourists.

A line of storms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes dumped record rainfall on parts of the Plains and Midwest, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding that forced at least 2,000 Texans from their homes.

Witnesses reported seeing the swollen Blanco River push the vacation house off its foundation and smash it into a bridge. Only pieces of the home have been found, according to Hays County Judge Bert Cobb.

One person who was rescued from the home told workers that the other 12 inside were all connected to two families, Mr Cobb said.

The house was in Wimberley Valley, an area known for its bed-and-breakfast inns and weekend rental cottages.

(Press Association)