The boarding students of a State secondary school in Yobe State were massacred on Saturday, July 6, 2013.
A pre-dawn attack on Saturday, July 6, 2013 on a boarding school in northeastern Nigeria left 29 students and a teacher dead, Thisday newspaper said, quoting Eli Lazarus, spokesman of the Joint Military Task Force, JTF in Yobe State. The incident, suspected to have been carried out by members of Boko Haram, happened in Mamudo village, some five kilometres from Potiskum town in Yobe State.
However, Agence France Presse, AFP news agency quoted local sources as saying 42 people actually died in the attack that took place at about 3 am on facilities of Government Secondary School, Mamudo. A 15-year-old student, Musa Hassan, whose four right hand fingers were blown off as he tried to ward off a gunshot, told the Associated Press, AP news agency that the gunmen arrived with jerry cans of fuel which they used to torch the school’s administrative block and one of the hostels. Many of the victims were roasted alive, he said.
A worker at Potiskum General Hospital, Haliru Aliyu, told AFP that they received 42 bodies of mostly students. Parts of some of the corpses were blown off or badly burnt, while others had gunshot wounds, Aliyu said. The 1,200 students of the school reportedly fled into nearby bushes and have not been seen since. Nigerian Tribune newspaper quoted Haliru Aliyu as saying the attackers gathered their victims in a hostel, threw in explosives and then opened fire. He added that security personnel were combing nearby bushes in search of students who escaped with gunshot wounds.
A local resident who did not want to be named, said the attack was believed to be a reprisal by Boko Haram for the killing of 22 sect members during a military raid in the town of Dogon Kuka on Thursday, July 4, 2013, Vanguard newspaper said. Dozens of schools have been burned in attacks by the Islamists since 2010, BBC said. Yobe is one of three northeastern states where President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in May, sending thousands of troops to the area.
