Islamic militants attacked a boarding school in
northeast Nigeria before dawn Saturday, killing 29 students and one teacher.
Some of the pupils were burned alive in the latest school attack blamed on a
radical terror group, survivors said.
Parents screamed in anguish as they tried to
identify the charred and gunshot victims. Farmer Malam Abdullahi found the bodies of two of
his sons, a 10-year-old shot in the back as he apparently tried to run away,
and a 12-year-old shot in the chest.
“That's it, I'm taking my other boys out of
school,” he told The Associated Press as he wept over the two corpses. He said
he had three younger children in a nearby school.
“It's not safe,” he said. “The gunmen are
attacking schools and there is no protection for students despite all the
soldiers.”
Survivors at the Potiskum General Hospital and
its mortuary said gunmen attacked Government Secondary School in Mamudo
village, 3 miles from Potiskum town at about 3 a.m. Saturday. The gunmen are
believed to be from the Boko Haram sect, whose name means “Western education is
sacrilege.”
They killed 29 students and English teacher
Mohammed Musa, who was shot in the chest according to another teacher, Ibrahim
Abdu.
“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I
woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me,” said 15-year-old Musa Hassan.
He put his arm up in defense, and suffered a
gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right hand, the one he uses to
write.
He said the gunmen came armed with jerry cans of
fuel that they used to torch the school's administrative block and one of the
hostels.
“They burned the children alive,” he said, the
horror showing in his wide eyes.
He and teachers at the morgue said dozens of
children from the 1,200-student school escaped into the bush but have not been
seen since.
Some bodies are so charred they could not be
identified, so many parents do not know if their children survived or died.
Islamic militants from Boko Haram and breakaway
groups have killed more than 1,600 civilians in suicide bombings and other
attacks since 2010, according to an Associated Press count.
Scores of schools have been burned down in the
past year in northeast Nigeria.
President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency May 14, and deployed
thousands of troops to halt the insurgency, acknowledging that militants had taken
control of some towns and villages.
The military has claimed success in regaining
control of the area — the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. However, the area
covers some 60,000 square miles, or one-sixth of the sprawling country.
Soldiers say they have killed and arrested
hundreds of fighters.
But the crackdown, including attacks with fighter
jets and helicopter gunships on militant camps, appears to have driven the
extremists into rocky mountains with caves, from which they emerge to attack schools
and markets.
The militants have increasingly targeted
civilians, including health workers on vaccination
campaigns, teachers and government workers.
Farmers have been driven from their land by the
extremists and by military roadblocks, raising the specter of a food shortage
to add to the woes of a people already hampered by the military's shutdown of
cell phone service and ban on using satellite telephones.
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