At least 14 killed in US tornadoes

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Mar 2 (Reuters) Tornadoes ripped across the Southern and Midwestern United States, killing at least 14 people including eight in the southern Alabama town of Enterprise, emergency management officials said.

The victims in Enterprise died when a twister caused part of a high school to collapse, and five people were killed elsewhere across Alabama, officials said. Another death was reported in Missouri.

The Montgomery Advertiser newspaper said state emergency managers were asked to send a ''mass fatality'' recovery team to Enterprise in Alabama's Coffee County.

Television news footage showed helicopters landing near wreckage of the school while ambulances came and went. A wall had collapsed and the building, part of its roof blown off, was surrounded with broken trees.

Emergency officials told local television that at least one teacher was among those killed at the school. CNN quoted an eyewitness as saying he carried the bodies of two young girls out of the building.

''Enterprise has suffered major and widespread damage,'' said Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, who sent 100 National Guard troops to Enterprise and put additional troops on alert.

State officials sent search and rescue teams, ambulances, generators and emergency lights to aid the search for survivors.

In the town of Caulfield in south-central Missouri, a tornado killed a girl in a mobile home and damaged six other homes and two gasoline stations, officials said.

Parts of several Midwestern states and regions as far south as the Gulf Coast to the Florida Panhandle had been under tornado watches or warnings most of the day.

''To the best of our knowledge there was at least one significant tornado that went through the city of Enterprise but we won't know if there was more than one before tomorrow when we send a team to conduct a storm survey of the affected area,'' said Tom Bradshaw, a meteorologist in Fort Worth, Texas, with the National Weather Service headquarters for the southern region.

''Several counties in Alabama and also Georgia are currently under tornado warnings,'' he said.

Reuters DH VP0535