ENTERPRISE, Alabama — A violent storm system that ripped apart an Alabama high school as students hunkered inside later tore through Georgia, hitting a hospital and raising the death toll to at least 20 across the Midwest and southeastern United States.Eight students were killed when a tornado struck Enterprise High School Thursday, blowing out the walls and collapsing part of the roof, Mayor Kenneth Boswell said yesterday. They were all in one wing of the school that took a direct hit, he said.

“It was in a split second that we sat down and started to cover ourselves before the storm hit,” said 17-year-old Kira Simpson, who lost four friends to the storm.

As the massive storm system swept into Georgia, another tornado apparently touched down 117 miles south of Atlanta, killing at least two people and injuring an undetermined number of others, said Buzz Weiss of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

At least 42 patients were evacuated to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Putney spokeswoman Jackie Ryan said.

Six more people were killed in the town of Newton, Georgia, including a child, and several homes were destroyed, Fire Chief Andy Belinc said early yesterday.

The burst of tornadoes was part of a larger line of thunderstorms and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. Authorities blamed tornadoes for the deaths of a seven-year-old girl in Missouri, 10 people in Alabama and nine in Georgia, and twisters also damaged homes in Kansas.

President George W. Bush will today visit areas hit by the violent storm system. The White House said Bush would make two stops, but his destinations were still being worked out with governors in the affected states.

Early yesterday, the storm was pelting the Carolinas with heavy rain, causing power outages, street flooding, and a tornado warning was posted through late morning for the North Carolina coast.

In all, the National Weather Service received 31 reports of tornadoes Thursday from Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, plus a report yesterday of a waterspout near Cartaret, North Carolina.

As the storm swept out to sea off South Carolina yesterday, the Coast Guard suspended a search for six boaters, saying a distress call during the storm late Thursday that their small craft was taking on water was likely a hoax. No debris or evidence of a boat was found.

At Enterprise High School, officials had been watching the storm Thursday as it swept through southern Missouri and headed into Alabama. The students were preparing to leave for the day when the sirens started up and the lights went out.

Teacher Grannison Wagstaff was with them.

“I said ‘Here it comes. Hit the deck,” he told CBS’s “The Early Show” Friday. “I turned around and I could actually see the tornado coming toward me.”

As the students scrambled for shelter, a section of roof and a wall near 17-year-old Erin Garcia collapsed on her classmates.

“I was just sitting there praying the whole time,” Garcia said. “It sounded like a bunch of people trying to beat the wall down. People didn’t know where to go. They were trying to lead us out of the building.

“I kept seeing people with blood on their faces.”

Outside, debris from the school was strewn around the neighbourhood, where cars were flipped or tossed atop each other.

Searchers pulled the final body, a boy, from the high school’s wreckage around 1.30 a.m. yesterday, assistant superintendent Bob Phares said.

Phares said it appeared that when the wall collapsed in the storm, the concrete slab ceiling came straight down on the students.

School officials had moved all the students into the interior halls after the first warnings were issued around 10.30 a.m. Thursday by the National Weather Service, Phares said.

A “significant number” of students were checked out by their parents after that. The school planned to send the rest of the students home at 1 p.m., but then a new warning surfaced, so that was delayed to 1.30 p.m., he said. The storm hit around 1.15 p.m.

The mayor said officials had yet to determine where the school’s students would attend classes for the rest of the year.

At least one other person was killed in Enterprise, a city 75 miles south of Montgomery. Another died across the state in rural Millers Ferry, where trailer homes were flipped and trees toppled, officials said.

In Sumter County, Georgia, home of former President Jimmy Carter, the main hospital received some storm damage and there were two fatalities and an undetermined number of injuries, Weiss said.

Officials were not sure whether the injured and the dead were inside the hospital when it struck, he said.

Further north, a tornado killed a man in a mobile home in Taylor County, county Emergency Management Agency Director Gary Lowe said.

Gov. Sonny Perdue flew by helicopter to damaged areas yesterday and issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency in several counties.