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Nigeria: Boko Haram Islamists storm college, kill students
(Reuters) – Suspected Islamist militants have 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 al-Qaeda-linked Islamist sect Boko Haram, attacked one hostel, took some students outside before killing them and shot others trying to flee, people at the scene said.
The 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.
President Goodluck Jonathan described the assault as “the creation of the devil” and suggested it might be time to change tactics against the rebels, without going into details.
“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 a.m. local time 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. 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.
The Boko Haram have become the biggest security threat in Africa’s second largest economy and top oil exporter.
