43 killed in suspected Boko Haram school attack

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed 43 people on Tuesday in an attack on secondary school students as they slept in the latest school massacre to hit Nigeria’s troubled northeast. Nigeria meanwhile issued an appeal to France and Abuja’s Francophone neighbours, especially Cameroon, to help it in the battle against Islamists, two days before a planned visit from French President Francois Hollande. The raid at 02:00 am targeted the Federal Government College in the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state and bore the hallmarks of a similar attack last September in which 40 died. The attackers reportedly hurled explosives into student residential buildings, sprayed gunfire into rooms and hacked a number of students to death. A senior medical source at the Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital in Yobe’s capital Damaturu said the gunmen only targeted male students and that female students were “spared”. “So far, 43 bodies have been brought (from the college) and are lying at the morgue,” said the source, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss death tolls. A statement released by President Goodluck Jonathan’s office described the killing by people it called “deranged terrorists and fanatics”, as “callous and senseless”. Yobe has been one of the hardest-hit areas in Boko Haram’s four-and-a-half year Islamist uprising, which has killed thousands of people. The name Boko Haram means “Western Education is forbidden”. The group has been blamed for waves of school attacks, especially in Yobe, where scores of students have been slaughtered in the last year. The state’s police chief, Sanusi Rufai, who confirmed the attack and had given an earlier death toll of 29, went to Buni Yadi - roughly 60 kilometres from Damaturu - with Governor Ibrahim Geidam to assess the damage. Damaturu resident Babagoni Musa told AFP that four ambulances carrying dead bodies drove past his shop, which is on the road from Buni Yadi. “They had tree branches on them which is a sign used here to signify a corpse is in a vehicle,” he said. People whose relatives were studying at the college had surrounded the morgue and were desperately seeking information about those killed, forcing the military to take control of the building to restore calm, the hospital source said. Yobe is one of three northeastern states which was placed under emergency rule in May last year when the military launched a massive operation to crush the Boko Haram uprising. At least 40 students were killed in September at an agriculture training college in Yobe after Boko Haram gunmen stormed a series of dorms in the middle of the night and sprayed gunfire on sleeping students. More than 1 000 people have been killed in the northeast since the emergency measures were imposed, despite the enhanced military presence.