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 As dawn broke Sunday and rescue crews prepared to reach hard-hit areas, officials fear the death toll will rise from a tornado that tore through Mississippi a day earlier.

 The twister, almost a mile wide, killed at least 10 people and decimated neighborhoods as it raked cities from the central western border with Louisiana northeastward to Alabama.

It leveled a church, sheared roofs off houses, overturned cars and plunged large swaths of the state in darkness as it toppled power lines.

“You could just feel the glass and debris flying in and cutting you,” said Stacy Walker, who took cover in a hair salon in Yazoo City where she worked. “It felt like minutes and minutes, but I’m sure it was just seconds the time that it lasted.”

Walker made it out safe, but later learned that a high school friend died protecting her children.

Two of the dead were children and one was a 3-month-old baby, said spokesman Jeff Rent of Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA).

Five of the dead were from Choctaw County, in the north central part of the state; four were from Yazoo County, north of Jackson; and one was from Holmes County, also in north central Mississippi, said Greg Flynn, another MEMA spokesman.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who was in Yazoo City where his home is located, called the twister “gigantic” and said that “in places (it) seemed to be to be several miles wide.”

Dale Thrasher was inside Yazoo City’s Hillcrest Baptist Church when it was flattened by the tornado.

“I went in the sanctuary and got under the pulpit table and the whole building fell around me,” he said.

His injuries: “Three little scratches.”

In Eagle Lake, near the Louisiana border, about 30 homes were destroyed. In Holmes County, 50 homes sustained structural damage, the National Weather Service reported.

Parts of three highways were closed due to downed trees and other damage: Highway 3 in Yazoo County and Highways 14 and 17 in Holmes County, the Mississippi Department of Transportation said.

In all, 12 counties reported injuries, with some of the injured airlifted to a level one trauma center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

Many tornado victims sought attention at King’s Daughters hospital in Yazoo City, where only one doctor was on duty Saturday night, said Jess Silvino, a nurse who worked at the facility..

President Obama has “been briefed on the tragedy in Mississippi and the situation is being followed by the White House,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

Barbour said he has not yet requested emergency federal aid but plans to do so on Monday.

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Article courtesy cnn.com