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A powerful tornado tore through rural Mississippi on Friday night, killing at least seven people, destroying buildings and knocking out power as severe weather that produced hail the size of golf balls moved through several southern states.

The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado caused damage about 60 miles (96km) north-east of Jackson, Mississippi. The rural towns of Silver City and Rolling Fork reported destruction as the tornado continued sweeping north-east at 70mph (113km/h) without weakening, racing towards Alabama.

At least seven people were killed by the tornado in Mississippi, Sharkey county coroner Angelia Easton told ABC News. Rolling Fork is located in Sharkey county.

The Sharkey county sheriff’s office in Rolling Fork reported gas leaks and people trapped in piles of rubble, according to the Vicksburg News. Some law enforcement units were unaccounted for in Sharkey, according to the newspaper.

Storm chaser Reed Timmer posted on Twitter that Rolling Fork was in immediate need of emergency personnel and that he was heading with injured residents of the town to a Vicksburg hospital.

The Sharkey-Issaquena community hospital on the west side of Rolling Fork was damaged, WAPT reported.

Rolling Fork and the surrounding area has wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields and catfish farming ponds. More than half a dozen shelters were opened in the state by emergency officials.

Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, said in a Twitter post on Friday night that search and rescue teams were active and that officials were sending more ambulances and emergency assets to those affected.

“Many in the MS Delta need your prayer and God’s protection tonight,” the post said. “Watch weather reports and stay cautious through the night, Mississippi!”

Rolling Fork’s mayor, Eldridge Walker, told WLBT-TV he was unable to get out of his damaged home soon after the tornado hit because power lines were down. He said emergency responders were trying to take injured people to hospitals. He did not immediately know how many people had been hurt.

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 when 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 home across a wide corn field from where he was. A wall in that home collapsed and trapped several people inside. As Knight spoke to AP by phone, he said he could see lights from emergency vehicles at the partially collapsed home.

The storm system was a supercell, the kind that brew the deadliest tornadoes and most damaging hail in the United States, said a meteorology professor at the University of Northern Illinois, Walker Ashley.

Meteorologists saw a big tornado risk coming for the general region as much as a week in advance, said Ashley, who was discussing it with his colleagues as early as 17 March. The National Weather Service’s storm prediction center put out a long-range alert for the area on 19 March, he said.

Tornado experts like Ashley have been warning about increased risk exposure in the region because of people building more. “You mix a particularly socioeconomically vulnerable landscape with a fast-moving, long-track nocturnal tornado and disaster will happen,” Ashley said in an email.

Matt Elliott, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s storm prediction center in Norman, Oklahoma, said the severe weather was expected across several states.

The storm prediction center warned the greatest threat of tornadoes would come in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. Storms with damaging winds and hail were forecast from eastern Texas and south-eastern Oklahoma into parts of south-eastern Missouri and southern Illinois.

More than 49,000 customers had lost power in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee as of Friday night, according to poweroutage.us.

In Texas, a suspected tornado struck about 5am in the south-west corner of Wise county, damaging homes and downing trees and power lines, said Cody Powell, the county’s emergency management coordinator. Powell said no injuries were reported.

The weather service had not confirmed a tornado, but damage to homes was also reported in neighboring Parker county, meteorologist Matt Stalley said.