French authorities had placed swaths of the country’s southwest on orange alert for storms, and numerous areas were hit with power outages and the disruption of transportation.
In the Aude region, officials canceled the third stage of the Vuelta a España cycling race, which was being held in the area, when a hailstorm forced riders to seek shelter.
The tornado hit hardest in the village of Pomas, with a population of 1,000, damaging an estimated 300 homes, in some cases ripping their roofs off.
More than 120 emergency workers were deployed to the scene, local authorities said, and 15 of the injured were taken to a hospital.
They included a pregnant woman who was hurt when her house collapsed on her, her husband told AFP.
The national weather service, Meteo-France, said winds reached up to 73 miles per hour in the nearby village of Arquettes-en-Val.
Storms across southern France upended the transportation network, delaying trains, forcing road closures, and causing delays and cancellations at airports in Bordeaux, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and even Paris to the north, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said.
An estimated 2,800 homes were left without electricity across 10 villages, officials said.
France sees several dozen tornadoes per year on average.
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