CORRECTED - UPDATE 3-Thirteen reported dead as storms rake US south

(Corrects state to Mississippi from Tennessee in 11th paragraph)

By Steve Barnes

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Feb 5 (Reuters) - Thirteen people were reported killed and dozens injured as tornadoes and lethal thunderstorms tore through areas of the U.S. South on Tuesday, causing widespread damage.

Arkansas emergency services reported seven dead in four counties, with as many as eight counties hit by tornadoes.

Six more died in Tennessee, according to the Nashville Tennessean newspaper, and more than two dozen others were injured, some critically.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, in telephone interview from emergency operations center in North Little Rock, said "It's a pretty rough night in the scope of it. I don't know if I can remember when we've had as many (tornado) warnings and (tornado) touchdowns."

Beebe's spokesman, Matt DeCample, said there was "no clue" as to how many were injured. "We're getting answers back in the multiples, but we're still looking for folks," he said.

Widespread damage in Tennessee included part of a shopping mall in Memphis and a dormitory at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, where some students were trapped for a time but not seriously injured, according to the Web site of the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper.

The Jackson Sun newspaper reported on its Web site that a nursing home in Jackson had been seriously damaged but that the 114 residents were evacuated with no injuries reported.

The Commercial Appeal quoted a National Weather Service spokesman as saying the Memphis area had been hit by a "pretty significant tornado."

CNN reported as many as 86 injuries and an unknown number of fatalities from the storm system, which swept through Arkansas before moving into Tennessee.

Several media reported at least four polling stations in western Tennessee, where voting in the state's presidential primaries was under way, were closed early because of the storm.

ABC affiliate WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi, reported on its Web site that a 50-foot (15-metre) wall had collapsed at the Sears store in the Hickory Ridge Mall in southeast Memphis and a building caught fire along State Line Road at Airways Boulevard.

Citing local officials, WAPT reported that an unknown number of people were trapped in a nearby industrial plant.

The Nashville Tennessean newspaper, citing the Fayette County Sheriff's Department, said one man was found dead north of Somerville, Tennessee. The death was storm-related but no details have been reported, the newspaper said.

The paper said the National Weather Service reported a half-dozen tornadoes had hit Tennessee and northern Mississippi.

It also reported that 60 tractor-trailers had crashed on Interstate Highway 40. (Writing by Mike Conlon and Todd Eastham; additional reporting by Pat Harris in Nashville and Richard Cotton in Tupelo, Mississippi; Ed Stoddard in Dallas, Editing by Sandra Maler)