NASHVILLE (Tennessee), Feb 6: Dozens of tornadoes sliced across southern US states ripping apart homes and shopping malls, killing at least 48 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said on Wednesday.

Twenty-four people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, and seven in Kentucky, officials in the three states said.

US media reported hundreds injured, and CNN said four people were killed in Alabama. Local authorities were not immediately available to confirm that death toll.

More than 50 tornados touched down as a series of thunderstorms rare for the winter season rolled through the region late Tuesday and early Wednesday.

Tornado watches were still in effect as of 1500 GMT in parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and the western Florida panhandle, the National Weather Service said.

In Tennessee, twisters knocked down a police radio tower, punched holes in a shopping mall, damaged a hangar at the Memphis airport, and ravaged a university campus, emergency officials said.

Overall, 149 people were injured in the state, said Julie Oaks of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

“That’ll probably be going up throughout the day. We have widespread damage across the state,” she said.

Students at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, heroically rescued classmates trapped in the dead of night after two campus dormitories collapsed, university president David Dockery said.

Fifty-one students were treated in hospital, including some with extensive injuries. But no-one was killed, even though 1,200 students were on campus when the twister struck.

“It’s an amazing thing,” he told a press conference.

The campus has already been rebuilt once after a 2002 tornado caused $2.6 million in damage. Now, “we are estimating that the damage is at least 15 times what that was at that time,” he said.—AFP