Barack Obama to visit tornado-hit Tuscaloosa

At least 297 people are known to have died from tornadoes that ripped through a swathe of states, 204 in Alabama.

Obama will visit Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where a twister thought to be a mile wide ploughed through the city.

He has pledged government support for storm-hit communities, with federal aid money being sent to Alabama.

Deaths and widespread devastation are also reported in Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and Virginia.

On Thursday the president hailed rescue workers and said he stood with every American affected by the "catastrophic" storms.

A state of emergency has been declared in seven states, and federal aid money is being sent to Alabama.

The president said he would travel to Alabama to meet those leading the emergency response and families who are "reeling from the disaster".

The US National Weather Service has reports of nearly 300 tornadoes since the storms began on Friday, more than 150 of them on Wednesday alone.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center has said some of the tornadoes on Wednesday may have been more than a mile (1.6 km) wide with wind speeds over 200 mph (320 km/h).

In Alabama, as many as one million people were without power on Thursday, as emergency workers and 2,000 soldiers scoured the wreckage for survivors.

Many people were picking through the remains of destroyed homes.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said he expected the death toll to rise as more bodies were discovered.

The number of deaths from the recent series of tornadoes is the greatest in the US since 1974, when an sequence of twisters claimed 315 lives in 13 US states.

One of the worst-hit towns was Tuscaloosa, which was struck by a massive tornado some experts say could have been an EF5, the strongest category of tornado.

Another town, Hackleburg, was reported to be "90% destroyed".

The mayor of Birmingham, William Bell said "whole neighbourhoods of housing, just completely gone. Churches, gone. Businesses, gone... [it] seems like a bomb has been dropped".

More than 25 people died in Phil Campbell, a town of about 1,000 in north-west Alabama.

The storms forced the Tennessee Valley Authority to close three nuclear reactors at a power plant in Alabama. Hundreds of thousands of homes have lost power as a result.

Mississippi reported 33 deaths on Tuesday and Wednesday. In Smithville, Mississippi, many buildings were ripped open, including a church, the city hall and the post office.

At least 14 people have been killed in Georgia and five in Virginia.