At least 19 people, including two children, have been killed in powerful storms that ravaged the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas in the central US, destroying homes and plunging thousands into darkness amid rising temperatures.

Seven fatalities were reported in Cooke County in Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado on Saturday night ripped through a rural area near a mobile home park, officials said.

“It’s just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington said.

The dead included two children, aged two and five, and three members of a family, the sheriff said.

Sappington said the death toll was likely to rise as search and rescue operations were underway for some people who remained missing on Sunday morning.

Texas governor Greg Abbott on Sunday said that about 100 people were injured by the Saturday tornado, noting that the exact toll was “hard to tell with certainty”, CBS News reported.

More than 200 houses as well as other buildings were destroyed and more than 100 others were damaged, Abbott said. “I’d be shocked if those numbers do not increase,” the governor added.

A tornado tore apart houses and businesses, flipped mobile homes and knocked down trees and power lines. Areas near the community of Valley View were especially hard-hit. Valley View is about an hour north of Dallas by car.

The tornado overturned vehicles and shut down a stretch of highway in the greater Dallas area.

Officials said multiple people were transported to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter in Denton County, but the extent of their injuries was not immediately clear.

Valley View Police Chief Justin Stamps told CBS News on Sunday the death toll in that community could be as high as six.

Hugo Parra, who lives in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, said he rode out the storm with about 40 to 50 people in the bathroom of a fuel station.