SPRING VALLEY, New York (Reuters) – Tiny white caskets of three children who drowned with their mother when she intentionally drove into the Hudson River were buried on Monday several miles away from her grave.

After a tense funeral marked by shouting between the two sides of the family, a hearse followed the father's orders and drove to the children's burial plot at Gethsemane Cemetery in Congers, New York. It was six miles from where their mother, Lashondra Armstrong, 25, was buried in New Hempstead, New York.

Armstrong, 25, killed herself along with her sons Landen, 5, and Lance, 2, and daughter Laianna, 11 months, on April 12 after an argument with their father, Jean Pierre, said police in Newburgh, a city about 25 miles north of New York City.

Her eldest son, La'Shaun, 10, who has a different father, was in the minivan but saved himself by climbing through a window as the vehicle disappeared beneath the waters.

The Armstrong family had arranged for the mother to be interred with her children, but Pierre intervened and arranged for a separate plot in another town.

His lawyer, Stephen Powers, said, "He thought it was inappropriate in light of the fact that the mother murdered the three children."

Tensions mounted on Monday as family members filed past police officers standing guard outside the funeral home where the ceremony took place.

An Armstrong family member, Gwendolen Green, said the mother's relatives were largely banned from the ceremony and guests were checked against a list before being allowed entry.

At one point, yelling could be heard coming from inside the funeral home and soon afterward Green, the mother's second cousin, was escorted from the building.

"You could cut the tension with a knife," Green said, adding that she had been asked to leave the ceremony after an argument.

Green said she had attended the funeral despite not being on the guest list.

"You're not gonna keep me from going in and seeing my family," she said. "I saw the children, and they were beautiful."

Green said the surviving son had not attended the funeral because it was "too much." She said the two dead boys were dressed in dark suits and the baby girl was wearing a white dress.

Soon after Green was escorted out, three little caskets accompanied by small bouquets of blue and white flowers, were loaded into a white hearse headed for Congers.

(Edited by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Spreading drug cartel violence in northern and central Mexico has led U.S. authorities to increase the number of states Americans should avoid for safety reasons.

A U.S. State Department travel advisory issued over the Easter weekend warned Americans to avoid all but essential travel to 10 states in northern and central Mexico due to "ongoing violence and persistent security concerns," up from six states named in a caution issued last September.

The latest advisory added warnings against nonessential travel to parts of Sonora, south of Arizona, and to parts of Mexico's central Jalisco, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas states, where cartel violence has spiked in recent months.

It also kept in place warnings issued last September advising against nonessential travel to northern Tamaulipas and central Michoacan states, as well as parts of northwestern Durango and Sinaloa states and the border states of Coahuila and Chihuahua, south of Texas.

"Bystanders, including U.S. citizens, have been injured or killed in violent incidents in various parts of the country, especially, but not exclusively in the northern border region, demonstrating the heightened risk of violence throughout Mexico," the warning said.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Mexico since late 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office and sent the armed forces to crush powerful cartels battling for lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

The State Department advisory noted that 111 Americans were reported murdered in Mexico last year, up from 35 in 2007.

In one gruesome sign of escalating violence, authorities earlier this month retrieved 177 corpses from a mass grave in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. Mexico's Attorney General blamed the Zetas drug cartel for the killings.

In another high profile crime, a U.S. federal agent was shot dead and a second wounded while driving on a highway in San Luis Potosi in February, in an attack also blamed on the Zetas.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Jerry Norton)

ST. LOUIS, Mo (Reuters) – A tornado destroyed 50 to 80 houses and killed at least one person in an Arkansas town on Monday and floods caused at least three deaths in the state as storms continued to lash the region, authorities said.

In Missouri, a warning of imminent failure for a levee on the Black River in the southeast part of the state prompted the mandatory evacuation of about 1,000 people.

In Vilonia, Arkansas, a town of some 3,000 people north of Little Rock, one death was confirmed and between 50 to 80 houses were destroyed by a tornado, according to Faulkner County emergency management. Police reported a path of destruction half a mile wide.

Law enforcement officials said there was another fatality in Washington County in northwest Arkansas from a drowning when a woman was swept away by rapidly moving water. The Madison County Sheriff's Office also said an elderly couple died after they were swept away in their car as War Eagle Creek rose in northern Arkansas on Monday afternoon.

The storms and flooding were the latest in the violent weather that has pummeled much of the mid-South this month. Two weeks ago at least seven people died from tornadoes in Arkansas, as more than 47 people died as storms tore a wide path from Oklahoma all the way to North Carolina.

Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe on Monday declared a state of emergency in response to tornadoes and flooding, which have caused problems on a number of roads and highways.

On Interstate 40 near Morrilton, vehicles were blown off the road, according to Arkansas State Police.

They said a church was destroyed at Morgan, Arkansas, just northwest of Little Rock. One tornado struck Little Rock Air Force Base, with initial reports indicating at least four homes in base housing were damaged. More than 100,000 people were without power in the state, authorities said.

In Missouri, water was topping the Black River levee at several points, which may lead to a failure of the levee system between the city of Poplar Bluff and the town of Qulin, the National Weather Service said on Monday.

County officials evacuated about 500 structures in the southeastern part of Poplar Bluff, which has about 17,000 residents.

Flood warnings on Monday prompted evacuations of hundreds of people in Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri following days of rain that led to rivers cresting over the flood stage, according to forecasters.

"The ground is very saturated -- there are areas with 9-10 inches of rain," said Mike O'Connell, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety.

He said some local roads are flooded in southern Missouri, and drivers were being warned not to go past barriers.

NATIONAL GUARD IN ACTION

Governor Jay Nixon activated the Missouri National Guard on Monday to help in areas hit by flooding.

Nixon also criticized U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to intentionally breach Birds Point levee along the Mississippi River in southeastern Missouri. He said that would affect hundreds of families and "pour a tremendous amount of water into 130,000 acres of prime farmland."

A spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers was not immediately available for comment.

The Black River is expected to rise higher than it did in 2008 when heavy rains caused widespread flooding, according to the National Weather Service in Little Rock.

Portions of two state parks in northwest Arkansas were closed due to the rising of the river. Many schools in northeastern Arkansas also closed Monday because of flooding.

Parts of Utica in southern Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky, also had flooding, according to Mike Callahan, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Louisville.

"This is the worst flooding we've had since 1997," he said.

Callahan said more flooding was reported in western Kentucky and southern Illinois. People who live along the Ohio River near Louisville started leaving their homes ahead of the flood late last week, and some roads around the city were closed, he said.

Bill Davis, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri, expects problems to be especially bad along the Taneycomo River in southwest Missouri.

"It's only (going) to get worse over the next couple of days," said Davis. "There's going to be more water on top of water."

(Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Additional reporting by Susan Guyett and Suzi Parker; Editing by Greg McCune and Jerry Norton)