Monstrous tornado kills 91 people (including 24 kids) in Oklahoma City

More than 20 children are among 91 feared dead in the Oklahoma City tornado that flattened a school with an entire year of pupils inside.

Rescuers are frantically seaching for survivors after a the ferocious storm ripped through a region of the US known as Tornado Alley.

The kids aged eight and nine at Plaza Towers Elementary School sheltered in a hallway as 200MPH gales - less than 1 per cent of all tornadoes reach such wind speed - ripped through the building in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.

Around 24 of those children were believed to have been killed although there was some hope for parents last night as some kids previously believed to be missing for were found sheltering in a local church.

Around 75 pupils and teachers remained in the school as the older children were removed before the storm hit.

Block after block of the devastated town lay in ruins. Homes were crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.

Children clung onto walls as the school was destroyed and rescue workers were seen pulling survivors from the wreckage.

Rescuers launched a desperate rescue effort at the elementary school, pulling children from heaps of debris and carrying them to a local medical centre.

Hundreds of houses were flattened as the two mile-wide twister destroyed the suburb.

The area is known as tornado alley and giant tornadoes have previously swept through the same suburb in 1999 and 2003 - but locals believe this is the worst storm they have experienced.

In a video of the storm, the dark funnel cloud could be seen marching slowly across the green landscape.

As it churned through the community, the twister scattered shards of wood, pieces of insulation, awnings, shingles and glass all over the streets.

It comes as yet more heartbreak for residents of Oklahoma, after a series of deadly tornadoes barreled through Kansas and Oklahoma this weekend, leaving a violent trail of destruction through the Midwest and South, killing two elderly men, injuring 39 people and flattening hundreds of homes.

The Oklahoma City area is prone to storms; in 1999, 36 people died in a tornado.