Extremist attack in Nigeria kills 42 at boarding school

Nigeria sufffered one of its bloodiest days as terrorists carried out a massacre on 42 children and teachers at a boarding school in the country’s insurgent-plagued north-east.

A car burns at the scene of a bomb explosion at St. Theresa Catholic Church at Madalla, Suleja, just outside Nigeria's capital Abuja, December 25, 2011 Photo: Reuters

Gunmen thought to be loyal to the al-Qaeda-linked Boko Haram fundamentalist movement descended on the Government Secondary School in Mamudo, spraying it with bullets and using jerry cans of petrol to burn some pupils alive.

At the regional morgue, Musa Hassan, 15, recalled the horror of listening to the death cries of his fellow pupils.

“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me,” said 15-year-old Musa. He put his arm up in instinctive self-defence, and suffered a gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right hand.

He said the gunmen came armed with jerry cans of fuel that they used to set light to the school’s administrative block and one of the hostels.

“They burned the children alive,” he said, horror showing in his wide eyes.
 

Survivors were taken to a clinic three miles away where they were under guard by the Nigerian army, which has been deployed across three northern states under an emergency offensive against Boko Haram launched in May.
Hundreds more children from the 1,200-student school were unaccounted for, having escaped into the bush.
Malam Abdullahi, a farmer and father of two victims, declared that he was determined to withdraw his three remaining sons from a nearby school.
He complained that there was no additional security protection put in place for students despite the deployment of thousands of troops since May.
One of Mr Abdullahi’s sons, a 10-year-old was shot in the back as he apparently tried to run away, while a 12-year-old brother was shot in the chest.
“It’s not safe,” he said. “The gunmen are attacking schools and there is no protection for students despite all the soldiers.”
Mamudo lies just a few miles from Maiduguri, the town known as the birthplace of Boko Haram, often referred to as the Nigerian Taliban. The name of the group, which was established there 11 years ago and has flourished ever since, translates as a call to ban Western education.
As a regional insurgency waged by Boko Haram has spread, the group has sought to retaliate against government offensives by attacking government schools.
It maintains that Western-style education is at the root of corruption and criminality in Nigeria, having lured people away from following Islamic teaching as a way of life. In traditional Koranic schools, pupils receive no formal education but spend their days memorising the Koran. Such schools are common in the Boko Haram stronghold.
Abu Qaqa, a spokesman for Boko Haram, declared the attacks on schools would escalate as long as the government soldiers involved in the assault targeted Koranic schools.
In one incident last month Nigerian soldiers had beaten pupils with canes. “When you attack Koran schools, you totally destroy Western schools,” his message said.
President Jonathan has declared Boko Haram a threat to Nigeria’s integrity and sought Western support for an offensive to crush the group.
He imposed a state of emergency in the states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, saying Boko Haram had captured towns and territory, turning swathes into no-go zones for the security forces. Dozens of schools have been burnt and unknown scores of students killed among more than 1,600 victims slain by extremists since 2010.
An estimated 10,000 pupils have been forced out of state schooling by the groups’ hit-and-run attacks, which have intensified since the start of the seven-week-old military offensive.
Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a school in Maiduguri last month, killing nine students, and a similar attack on a school in the city of Damaturu killed seven just days earlier.