Horror, Horror, Horror!!!
The
emergency rule imposed on the Nothern states including Yobe State appear to have suffered a setback after
gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram Islamists, struck in a Potiskum secondary
school, early yesterday, killing 29 students and a teacher.
Another
report said 42 students were killed in the attack while dozens were missing.
Eye
witnesses spoke of a gory sight as some of the students in the boarding school
were burned alive.
Parents
screamed in anguish as they tried to identify the charred and gunshot
victims.
The Joint
Task Force (JTF) enforcing the emergency rule said it had killed and arrested
hundreds of Boko Haram fighters but yesterday’s
attack on the Potiskum school came just as unidentified gunmen attacked
the Divisional Police Station and a bank in Karim Lamido local government area
of Taraba State, killing three policemen.
Students
burned alive
Mallam
Abdullahi, father of two of the victims of the Potiskum attack, a report said,
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 said 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 the gunmen attacked
Government Secondary School in Mamudo village, five kilometres (3 miles) from
Potiskum town at about 3 a.m. They killed 29 students and an English teacher,
Mohammed Musa, who was shot in the chest, according to another teacher, Ibrahim
Abdu.
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.
Charred
bodies
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 were so charred
they could not be identified; many parents did not know if their children
survived or died.
Explosives
“We
received 42 dead bodies of students and other staff of Government Secondary
School in Mamudo last night. Some of them had gunshot wounds while many of them
had burns and ruptured tissues,” Haliru Aliyu of the Potiskum General Hospital
was quoted as saying by another report.
“From accounts of teachers and other students
who escaped the attack, the gunmen gathered their victims in a hostel and threw
explosives and opened fire, leading to the death of 42,” May the bodies of the departed Rest in Peace.
