Chicago:
The toll from the deadliest single tornado to strike the United States in more than six decades has risen to 138, officials said today.
The toll rose after four critically injured victims died in hospital, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
The mile-wide May 22 twister reduced a third of the Missouri town of Joplin to rubble, tearing apart homes, businesses, a hospital, churches and schools along a four-mile (six-kilometre) path of destruction.
With phone service knocked out and families scattered in search of a safe place to sleep, the state patrol was called in to help sort through thousands of request for help finding missing loved ones.
Governor Jay Nixon announced yesterday that troopers had tracked down all of the missing, and officials had identified all of the bodies in a hastily constructed morgue.
The United States is experiencing its deadliest year for tornadoes since 1936 and the fifth worst year on record, weather service statistics showed.
With the tornado season far from over, the 2011 toll rose to 523 today.