Deadly tornado hits Mexican city

Footage shows aftermath of twister that hit Ciudad Acunaon on the US-Mexico border, killing at least 13 people

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A tornado raged through a city on the US-Mexico border on Monday, destroying homes, throwing cars into the sky and ripping an infant away from its mother. At least 13 people were killed, authorities said.
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.


The baby was also missing after the twister that hit Ciudad Acuna, a city of 125,000 across from Del Rio, 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 Zamora described as "devastated."


People stand near a destroyed vehicle after a tornado swept through Ciudad Acuna (AP)

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

"There's nothing standing, not walls, not roofs," said Edgar Gonzalez, a spokesman for the city government, describing some of the destroyed homes in a one square mile stretch.

By midday, 13 people were confirmed dead - 10 adults and three infants.

Family members and neighbours gathered around a pickup truck where the bodies of a woman and two children were laid out in the truck's bed, covered with sheets. Two relatives reached down to touch the bodies, covered their eyes and wept.

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

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

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said he planned to travel to Acuna later in the day with officials from government agencies.

Residents walk out of their damaged house after recovering belongings from debris after a tornado hit the town of Ciudad Acuna (Reuters)

In the US, 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.

The storms were blamed for five deaths on Saturday and Sunday, including two in Oklahoma and three in Texas.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday likened the ferocity of flash flooding to a tsunami.