Severe spring storms including tornados have left 16 people dead and destroyed school buildings and homes in southern states of the US.

The storm did most damage in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Alabama.

Among those killed were two elderly sisters in the Oklahoma town of Tushka, where at least 25 people were injured.

In Alabama seven people died, including a mother and her two children. The other seven deaths were in rural areas of Arkansas.

The storms ripped up trees and power lines, tore roofs off houses, and scattered tractor-trailers across roads.

On Saturday local officials confirmed seven people had died in Alabama, adding to the earlier deaths in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The dead included:

• A man and his baby daughter, killed after lightning felled a tree in Garland County, Arkansas
• A six-year-old boy killed by a falling tree in Bald Knob, Arkansas
• A woman killed when strong storm winds flipped over a mobile home in rural St Francis County, Arkansas
• A mother and her eight-year-old son were killed in Little Rock when a tree fell on a home and, outside the city, a tree fell on a vehicle, killing a man inside

As the storm howled through Crystal Springs, Arkansas, Eden Davis woke up, grabbed her young child and sat on the edge of the bed waiting to pull a mattress over both of them to shield the pair from flying debris, AP reported.

"I've never been so nervous about a storm," she said.

"I was asleep, but my fiance called me and told me to wake up and that I needed to watch the news because the weather was getting real bad."

While several tornados were reported, much of the damage in the south was attributed to straight-line winds - sudden, violent downbursts that struck with hurricane force in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile in Texas, a firefighter was killed while battling wildfires fanned by the strong winds.

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