At least 11 people were confirmed dead on Saturday as tropical storm Florence brought catastrophic flooding to the US state of North Carolina.

Nearly one million people were without power and thousands were in shelters as Donald Trump declared a disaster and the military sent 200 soldiers to help.

Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, said: "This system is unloading epic amounts of rainfall. We face walls of water. It's relentless and excruciating."

The first victims of the storm, a mother and her eight-month-old son, died when the back wall of their brick bungalow collapsed after being hit by a fallen tree, trapping them.

The mother was named locally as Lesha Murphy-Johnson.

Her home on Mercer Avenue in a suburb of Wilmington, North Carolina, was not under a mandatory evacuation order, but most people had left the area.