40 Nigerian male students killed after suspected Boko Haram militants storms College
Suspected Islamist militants stormed a college in northeastern Nigeria and shot dead around 40 male students, some of them while they slept early on Sunday, witnesses said.
The
gunmen, thought to be members of rebel sect Boko Haram, attacked one
hostel, took some students outside before killing them and shot others
trying to flee, people at the scene told Reuters
"They started gathering students into groups outside, then they
opened fire and killed one group and then moved onto the next group and
killed them. It was so terrible," said one surviving student Idris, who
would only give his first name.
"They came with guns around 1 am
(2400 GMT) and went directly to the male hostel and opened fire on them
... The college is in the bush so the other students were running around
helplessly as guns went off and some of them were shot down," said
Ahmed Gujunba, a taxi driver who lives by the college.
Boko Haram, which wants to establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has intensified attacks on civilians in recent weeks in revenge for a military offensive against its insurgency.
Several schools, seen as the focus of Western-style education and culture, have been targeted.
Boko Haram and spin-off Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-linked Ansaru have become the biggest security threat in Africa's second largest economy and top oil exporter.
Western governments are increasingly worried about the threat posed by Islamist groups across Africa, from
Mali and Algeria in the Sahara, to Kenya in the east, where Somalia's al-Shabaab fighters killed at least 67 people in an attack on a Nairobi shopping mall a week ago.
Bodies
were recovered from dormitories, classrooms and outside in the
undergrowth on Sunday, a member of staff at the college told Reuters,
asking not to be named.
A Reuters witness counted 40 bloody
corpses piled on the floor at the main hospital in Yobe state capital
Damaturu on Sunday, mostly of young men believed to be students.
The
bodies were brought from the college, which is in Gujba, a rural area
30 miles (50km) south of Damaturu and around 130 miles from Nigerian borders with Cameroon and Niger.
State police commissioner Sanusi Rufai said he suspected Boko Haram was behind the attack but gave no details.
Revenge attacks
Thousands have been killed
since Boko Haram launched its uprising in 2009, turning itself from a
clerical movement opposed to Western culture into an armed militia with
growing links to al Qaeda's West African wing.
President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three
northeastern state in May, including Yobe, and ordered a military
offensive to crush Boko Haram's insurgency.
There was an initial lull in the violence as Islamists
fled bases in cities, forests and mountains. Then the militants began
revenge attacks on schools, security forces and civilians believed to be
helping them.
In July, suspected Boko Haram militants killed 27
students and a teacher at a school in Potiskum, a town about 30 miles
from the site of Sunday's attack.
Several hundred people have died
in assaults over the past few weeks. Some observers say the army
offensive has only succeeded in pushing attacks away from well-guarded
large towns and cities into vulnerable rural areas.
Boko Haram's insurgency is also putting pressure on the economy of Africa's most populous nation. Nigeria's
security spending has risen to more than 1 trillion naira ($6.26
billion) per year, or around 20 percent of the federal budget. ($1 =
159.8 Nigerian naira)
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