UN council to probe Syria as 12 killed in protests

GENEVA, April 29 (AFP) : The 47-nation UN Human Rights Council on Friday voted for a revised US-led resolution on the crackdown in Syria that asked the UN rights chief to send an investigative mission to the country. The resolution also "unequivocally condemns the use of lethal violence against peaceful protestors by the Syrian authorities... and urges the Syrian government to help with the rescue and clean-up operations. "We had a major catastrophic event here in Alabama with the outbreak of numerous long-track tornadoes," said Governor Bentley. In neighboring Mississippi, which suffered more than 30 casualties, Governor Haley Barbour told CNN that Wednesday "was just as bad as I can ever remember. Some people will make the argument it is as bad as it has ever been." As the long day dragged on, rescue workers battled to find missing people and try to rescue survivors still trapped in the rubble of their homes. Many homes looked like they had been blown inside out, with the walls torn down and furniture spilling into the street. In a parking lot at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa -- where 36 people were confirmed dead -- tornadoes left behind 20 smashed cars, many of them piled on top of one another. "I don't want to think now in how much I lost," Robert Mitton told AFP. "I hope we can get some help from the government. I live very close, my house is very damaged, but my family is fine." Owen Simmons, who works in a furniture store, pointed to a black cross and a zero below painted on the side of his house. "It means that the rescue team has already checked my home and they found no victims. That's what really matters." Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox said his town's infrastructure had been completely devastated. "When you look at this path of destruction, likely five to seven miles (eight to 11 kilometers) long and half a mile to a mile wide, I don't know how anyone survived," he told CNN. "There are parts of this city I don't recognize." It was also a dark day for Birmingham, Alabama's largest city with more than a million residents. Mayor William Bell spoke of "whole neighborhoods of housing, just completely gone. Churches, gone. Businesses, gone." The overall storm toll includes 34 deaths in Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 13 in Arkansas, five in Virginia, two in Missouri, and one in Kentucky, according to state officials. "Oh my God, our town is in pieces," said Tim Holt, a clerk at a local hotel in Ringgold, Georgia. "We saw the funnel cloud coming and I ran into the bathroom with my wife and daughter." Violent twisters that famously rip through the US south's "Tornado Alley" are formed when strong jet winds bringing upper-level storms from the north interact with very warm, humid air mass from the Gulf of Mexico. The record for confirmed tornadoes over a 24-hour period is 148, set during the so-called "Super Outbreak" in 1974. More than 160 twisters were reported on Wednesday but not yet confirmed. The tornado disaster is already the fourth worst on record in the United States and when the final toll is known it may only be surpassed by the giant Tri-State Tornado of March 1925, which left 747 people dead.