232 Still Missing After Joplin Tornado

State authorities in Missouri said Thursday that 232 people were still unaccounted for in the town of Joplin, where a violent tornado left 125 dead and dozens injured.

Andrea Spillars, deputy director and general counsel of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said the list of those missing since Sunday's tornado would be released later Thursday.

She appealed to the public to help clarify the status of individuals on that list, and urged survivors named among the 232 to check in with authorities. "Our goal is to get that number to zero," Spillars said at a morning news conference.

Previous reports said as many as 1,500 people were unaccounted for in the city of about 50,000, but many were expected to be found when cell phone coverage improved and survivors were able to inform authorities of their whereabouts.

The twister that savaged Joplin on Sunday evening was the single deadliest tornado recorded since the National Weather Service began tracking such information in 1950. The US is experiencing one of its worst tornado seasons in decades.

A series of twisters hit Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday, killing at least 16 people.

The death toll in Oklahoma rose to 10 Thursday after the body of three-year-old Ryan Hamil was found in a lake nearby his Piedmont home, where he was ripped from his mother's arms when the storm hit, according to KOCO-TV.

Ryan's 16-month-old brother Cole was also killed, while their mother, Katherine Hamil, and sister, Kathleen, were injured when the family tried to take cover in a bathtub. They remained in the hospital Thursday.

More tornadoes touched down in Sedalia, Mo., and Bedford, Ind., on Wednesday, injuring several people and destroying homes and businesses, though no deaths were reported.

US President Barack Obama will visit Joplin on Sunday to survey the damage -- a day after he returns from his six-day-long tour of Europe.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has opened a mobile disaster recovery center in Joplin to assist residents with requests for federal aid, The Wall Street Journal reported. Low-interest loans of up to $200,000 are available to homeowners for the repair or replacement of property, FEMA said.

A recovery center was also scheduled to open Thursday to help Joplin businesses hurt in the tornado and local schools were still due to open in August, WSJ said.

In a news conference Wednesday, local officials said they planned to build a mobile hospital by Sunday at or near St. John's Regional Medical Center, one of the worst-hit locations where almost every window of the multiple-story facility was blown out. Gary Pulsipher, the hospital's administrator, pledged to one day rebuild the center entirely.Read more: NewsCore