A powerful tornado swept through an Oklahoma City suburb on Monday, tearing down blocks of homes, two schools and leaving at least 91 people dead, including 20 children

A powerful tornado swept through an Oklahoma City suburb on Monday, tearing down blocks of homes, two schools and leaving at least 91 people dead, including 20 children, local officials said.
  
Rescue efforts began almost immediately, as concerned residents ran up and down the blocks of flattened houses calling out for survivors.

The state medical examiner's office released the latest death toll but the number was climbing rapidly, as emergency crews combed through smashed homes and the collapsed remains of an elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma.
  
Stunned weather forecasters reported a two-mile (three-kilometer) wide swath of vicious winds, and television news helicopters tracked a dark funnel plowing through densely-packed suburbs.

The dead included at least 20 children, most of them under the age of 12, Amy Elliott, of the state medical examiner's office, told AFP. She later told CNN in a televised interview that the total death toll had risen to 91. CNN reported that at least 145 people had been hospitalized.
  
From its news helicopter, KFOR's cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-story homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys.

US President Barack Obama meanwhile declared a "major disaster" in Oklahoma and ordered federal aid to supplement local recovery efforts.