Seven people were killed when a devastating tornado tore through northwestern Ohio, a state emergency management official told AFP on Sunday.

"All seven deaths were a result of the tornado," said Tamara McBride, spokeswoman for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, adding that the fatalities were from a tornado that touched down in Wood County, southeast of Toledo, Ohio.

As many as seven tornadoes touched down in northwestern Ohio late Saturday and early Sunday morning, according to data from the US National Weather Service.

A five-year-old child was among the dead in the small town of Millbury, Ohio, local media reported, citing Lake Township Police Chief Mark Hummer.

Heavy storm winds were already raking Millbury when the main twister touched down at around 11:00 pm Saturday, destroying some 50 homes, businesses, and the roof and walls were ripped from the local high school, local officials said.

Hummer told MSNBC the tornado tore a seven-mile long corridor of devastation, about 100 yards (meters) wide, through Millbury.

A dozen people were hospitalized following the tornado, he said.

The tornados and storms were not confined to Ohio, with 11 people injured in storms in Michigan and 17 hospitalized in Illinois.

Damage to a wall of a Michigan nuclear power plant prompted an automatic shutdown, CNN reported Sunday, and the facility will remain closed until response crews assess the impact.

earlier related report
Landslide kills eight in northern Pakistan: police
Gilgit, Pakistan (AFP) June 4, 2010 - A landslide triggered by rain killed eight people including six women in a small village in Pakistan's Himalayas before dawn Friday, officials said.

The incident struck Kaindiric in Skardu district, about 300 kilometres (187 miles) east of the northern city of Gilgit, police officer Mukhtar Ahmed said.

Fifteen houses were completely destroyed by the landslide and nine people injured, he told AFP.

Police and local volunteers recovered the casualties from the debris, police official Manzoor Hussain said.

The incident happened six months after a massive landslide killed 20, left about 25,000 people stranded and blocked the Hunza river in the remote Himalayan region about 750 kilometres (450 miles) north of Islamabad.

That incident created an artificial lake and officials said hundreds of people fled their homes after floods swept through the villages of Ataabad, Ayeenabad and Shishkat in the district of Hunza, wiping out dozens of houses.

Water from the lake has submerged parts of Gulmit, a tourist resort on the main Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan with China.