GREENSBURG, Kansas — Two more victims were found in the rubble that was once Greensburg, raising the death toll from a powerful tornado that obliterated the small Kansas town to at least 10, authorities said yesterday.The massive tornado, an F-5 with wind estimated at 205 mph, was part of a weekend of violent storms across the Plains that killed at least 12 people statewide.

The tornado, which carved a track 1.7 miles wide and 22 miles long, left little standing in Greensburg, a town of 1,500 residents, but the grain elevator. It demolished every business on the main street. Churches lost their steeples, trees were stripped of their branches and neighbourhoods were flattened. Officials estimate as much as 95 percent of the town was destroyed.

One of the latest two victims was found under debris in the middle of town, city administrator Steve Hewitt said. The other body was pulled from a lake outside of town.

Rescue teams also found a survivor as they searched the wreckage on Sunday, two days after the tornado hit, authorities said. The news offered some hope as residents made a grim return to their destroyed houses.

Since the tornado hit Friday night, emergency responders have had little indication of how many people in this central Kansas town may be safely staying with friends or relatives, rather than in shelters.

“We’ve been over the town twice now — all of our partners around the state, the experts from cities with technical search-and-rescue,” Maj. Gen. Todd Bunting, the state’s adjutant general, told CNN Monday morning. “We’ve done everything we can.

“Some of this rubble is 20, 30 feet deep. That’s where we’ve spent all our efforts, and we’ll do it again today.”

Greensburg residents were being allowed back home Monday to sift through their wrecked homes, giving rescuers a better idea of whether any of the people still missing might be buried somewhere under the rubble. Authorities were checking identification and compiling a list of people whose whereabouts still have not been determined.

The effort was partly stalled at midday yesterday when a tank holding anhydrous ammonia — a toxic substance used as fertiliser by farmers — began leaking, prompting officials to evacuate the northeast part of the town.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was in Greensburg yesterday, and Federal Emergency Management Agency director R. David Paulison planned to tour the devastation for the first time since the tornado hit Friday night.

President George W. Bush declared parts of Kansas a disaster area, freeing up federal money to aid the recovery.

City officials said classes for the area’s 300 students would be cancelled for the rest of the year.

Amid the searching yesterday, a museum volunteer uncovered a missing 1,000-pound pallasite meteorite which officials feared had been swept up by the winds. One of the largest of its kind in the world, the meteorite is insured for $1 million.

For decades, meteorite hunters from throughout the world have been drawn here to hunt for space rocks in the rich soil near here.

The storm system that swept south-central Kansas also spawned tornadoes in Illinois, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Nebraska, and the heavy rain created flooding dangers across the region Monday.

The National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for parts of Texas. In Topeka, the Kansas capital, flooding forced hundreds of people out of their homes early Monday, closed schools and blocked streets and highways around the state.

In southwest Iowa, nearly 1,600 residents of the towns of Red Oak and all those of tiny Coburg were urged to evacuate Monday as the East Nishnabotna River and a creek rose out of their banks.

The National Weather Service classified the Kansas tornado an F-5, the highest category and the first since the weather service revised its scale this year to more comprehensively gauge tornadoes’ damage potential, with less emphasis on wind speed. The last tornado classified as an F-5 hit the Oklahoma City area on May 3, 1999, killing 36 people.

Kansas’ governor said the state’s response was limited by the shifting of emergency equipment, such as tents, trucks and semi-trailers, to the war in Iraq.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was bringing in travel trailers to house some of the town’s residents. But there was no indication when people would be able to move into those trailers, though, because the area was choked with debris and the town had no clean water.