24 Killed as Tornadoes Hit 9 States : Storms: Violent weather from Texas to Georgia to Ohio injures hundreds. Mississippi is hardest hit. Rescuers search for missing victims.

Raging thunderstorms marched across the South on Sunday, unleashing tornadoes that killed at least 24 people and causing extensive damage in at least nine states.

The storms flattened houses, demolished brick buildings and overturned tractor-trailers in an eastward march from Texas to Georgia before swinging north and continuing their deadly rampage in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. Several states remained under tornado watches Sunday night.

Eight people were reportedly injured when a tornado touched down in the western Ohio village of Arcanum on Sunday night. South Carolina was hit by at least two tornadoes, also Sunday night. Thousands of people in Indianapolis were without power.

Tiny Brandon, Miss., was hardest hit. Ten people died and at least 86 were injured in or near the town when the storms roared through late Saturday night. Sixty houses and dozens of mobile homes were damaged.

“It’s unbelievable,” said W. L. Whittington, mayor of Brandon, which is 15 miles east of Jackson, the state capital. “We’re lucky we didn’t lose more lives than we did.”

On Sunday, rescue workers in Mississippi, where 15 were killed and 150 people injured, searched for victims while repair crews cleared roads and the newly homeless sought shelter. Eighteen counties in Mississippi suffered damage, the state Emergency Management Agency said.

Three people were killed and scores injured Sunday as tornadoes moved across northern Georgia. Four more died near Eatonton, Ga. An 11-year-old boy was killed in western Tennessee when winds overturned a mobile home near Toone, officials said. One person died and at least nine were injured in northern Kentucky on Sunday afternoon.

In Georgia, tornadoes touched down in at least six counties, turning over mobile homes and causing extensive damage in some areas. Deputies used dogs to search wreckage.

A twister blew the steeple off a Baptist church in Woodstock, Ga., where about 75 people were worshiping and threw it 200 yards into the church cemetery. The parishioners, who ducked under pews for cover, all escaped injury.

Tractor-trailers were blown off Interstate 75 in the Atlanta area, backing up traffic for miles.

Sen. Wyche Fowler Jr. (D-Ga.), who faces a runoff election Tuesday, was involved in a seven-car crash blamed on the storm but was not among the 22 people injured.

The hardest hit area in Georgia was Kennesaw, northwest of Atlanta. Large swaths of the Atlanta suburb were wiped out by the storm. Miraculously, however, no deaths or serious injuries were reported. Thirty-four people were reported hospitalized, mostly for cuts and bruises.

“We were really lucky we had no more injuries than we had,” said deputy sheriff Duane Wilson.

The tornadoes spun out of a wall of thunderstorms that began Saturday night in Texas and carried scattered tornadoes into Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia.

In Mississippi, Gov. Kirk Fordice surveyed the damaged areas early Sunday morning. Rep. G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.), whose district includes Rankin County, where Brandon is located, said that he would ask President Bush to declare the area eligible for federal disaster assistance.

The storms hit about midnight, leveling houses, uprooting trees and bringing down hundreds of power and telephone poles.

“It just whished through here like slicing hot butter,” Constable Martin Mann said. “We’ve got two-story homes not bigger than a bag of firewood. They’re wiped out.”

A tornado smashed through a mobile home park and then skipped across Brandon to an upscale neighborhood, where it killed a father and son, along with two of the boy’s Cub Scout buddies spending the night there.

At the mobile home park, where six people died, rescue workers used doors from smashed houses as makeshift stretchers, said Charlie Wilkinson, civil defense director for Rankin County.

Mississippi Power & Light Co. spokesman Edd Jussely said that power may not be restored to some homes in the area for two days.

A National Weather Service meteorologist said the conditions that spawned the storms were caused by a low-moving southern flow of moist air off the Gulf of Mexico that combined with much colder westerly winds higher in the atmosphere.