Powerful tornadoes killed at least 17 people as they flipped cars, ripped up homes and uprooted trees across south-central United States, emergency officials reported Monday.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said that 15 people were killed when tornadoes touched down on Sunday, while an official with the Oklahoma Emergency Management Agency said there were at least two tornado victims in the state.

"It's chaos right now," the mayor of the Arkansas town of Velonia, James Firestone, told CNN late Sunday as emergency crews used searchlights to comb through the debris overnight in some of the hardest-hit areas.

The central part of the town of 4,000 "seems like it's completely levelled. There's a few buildings partially standing, gas lines spewing. Fire lines down. We've had some casualties."

The twisters tore through the region Sunday and overnight into Monday, and are forecast to threaten much of the region through Tuesday.

'Homes reduced to rubble'

Firestone said that police and firefighters from nearby cities as well as National Guard troops were heading to Velonia.

Twisters also devastated large sections of the town of Mayflower, population 2,300, just northwest of the Arkansas state capital Little Rock.

Pictures of tornado damage posted by Arkansas TV station THV 11 showed smashed cars, homes ripped in half, and whole residential blocks reduced to rubble.

Officials said that parts of Interstate 40, a major east-west highway across the United States, was closed due to debris and overturned vehicles in the Mayflower area.

Two regional utility companies, Entergy and First Electric Cooprative, said that more than 15,000 customers were in the dark.

"It's been a truly awful night for many families, neighborhoods and communities, but Arkansans always step up to help each other recover," Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe wrote on Twitter.

The full impact of the storm and its toll will likely not be known until after sunrise at around 1130 GMT.

In Oklahoma, a powerful twister struck the town of Quapaw.

"There have been numerous homes and buildings damaged and some destroyed," Keli Cain of the Oklahoma Emergency Management Agency told AFP.

She cited local emergency officials as saying that a fire station was destroyed and there was damage to the northern part of the town.

Dozens of homes were also reported destroyed in nearby Kansas, though state officials have reported no fatalities.

The National Weather Service warned of a severe weather threat across the central and southern United States over the next days.