Deadly tornado rips through Mexican city

At least 13 people died and dozens more were injured after a freak tornado ripped through the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Acuña on Monday morning, flipping over cars and tearing down homes, the government said.

Three children were among the dead, said Jesus Garcia, spokesman for the local state of Coahuila.

Mayor Evaristo Perez Rivera said 300 people were being treated at local hospitals,

The twister hit a seven-block area, said Victor Zamora, interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila, who described the area as "devastated."

"There's nothing standing, not walls, not roofs," said Edgar Gonzalez, a spokesman for the city government, describing some of the destroyed homes in a 1 square mile stretch.

The twister struck not long after daybreak, around the time buses were preparing to take children to school, said Zamora.

Coahuila's governor Ruben Moreira visited Acuña on Monday afternoon, and promised authorities will lead the recovery in the city across the U.S. border from Del Rio, Texas.

The storm system that spawned the deadly tornado in Acuña is the same one whose rains have caused flooding in Texas.

Walls and ceilings collapsed under the force of the whirlwind, which traveled at a speed of some 31 mph  and blew gusts over 124 mph, the government said, taking the border city unawares in the early hours of Monday.

"We're not used to such destruction," Ciudad Acuña's mayor Evaristo Lenin Perez told local radio. "We don't have records of a single tornado in Acuña, a 110-year-old city."

A spokesman for the National Meteorological Service said it was the strongest tornado for at least 15 years in Mexico. Preliminary findings suggested it registered between a grade EF2 and EF3 on the enhanced Fujita scale, the spokesman said.

After the twister had swept through the city, photos showed children climbing past mangled cars that had been swept into their homes, while adults salvaged valuables from the rubble.

"Most of the dead are people who were outside, not people who were inside their homes," Perez said.

Authorities have set up seven refuge points for those whose houses were destroyed, the Coahuila government said.

"We're working on clearing the debris of the destroyed buildings and cars that were displaced," said Francisco Martinez, the deputy minister for Civil Protection in Coahuila.

Wire services