By Steve Barnes
Arkansas emergency services reported seven dead in four counties, with as many as eight counties hit by tornadoes.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, in telephone interview from emergency operations centre in North Little Rock, said "It's a pretty rough night in the scope of it. I don't know if I can remember when we've had as many (tornado) warnings and (tornado) touchdowns."
Widespread damage in Tennessee included part of a shopping mall in Memphis and a dormitory at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, where some students were trapped for a time but not seriously injured, according to the Web site of the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper.
The Commercial Appeal quoted a National Weather Service spokesman as saying the Memphis area had been hit by a "pretty significant tornado."
Several media reported at least four polling stations in western Tennessee, where voting in the state's presidential primaries was under way, were closed early because of the storm.
Citing local officials, WAPT reported that an unknown number of people were trapped in a nearby industrial plant.
The paper said the National Weather Service reported a half-dozen tornadoes had hit Tennessee and northern Mississippi.
(Writing by Mike Conlon and Todd Eastham; additional reporting by Pat Harris in Nashville and Richard Cotton in Tupelo, Mississippi; Ed Stoddard in Dallas, Editing by Sandra Maler)
