Tears and anguish continue to fill the air of the small town of Mamudo, five kilometres from Potiskum, the commercial nerve centre of Yobe State as more details have emerged from the attack by suspected Boko Haram gunmen on the Government Secondary School in the town.
As at the last count, nothing less than 42 students were feared dead, and another 1000 missing, said a medical worker and residents of the town.
Parents, according to agency reports, screamed in anguish as they tried to identify the charred and gunshot victims.
The Associated Press reported of a farmer, Malam Abdullahi finding 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.”
The medical worker, Haliru Aliyu of the Potiskum General Hospital, who spoke to AFP, said over 40 corpses were received in the hospital: “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,” Aliyu related.
Mamudo is some five kilometres from Potiskum, the commercial hub of Yobe State which has been a flashpoint in the Boko Haram insurgency in recent months.
“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,” Aliyu said.
He said security personnel were combing the bushes around the school in search of students who were believed to have escaped with gunshot wounds.
“So far six students have been found and are now in the hospital being treated for gunshot wounds,” he added.
An English teacher, Mohammed Musa, was shot in the chest, according to another teacher, Ibrahim Abdu.
One of the survivors, Musa Hassan, 15, recounted his ordeal to AP: “We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me.”
He said he was lucky to have survived as he had put his arm up in defence and suffered a gunshot wound that blew off all four fingers on his right hand, the one he writes with.
He said the gunmen came armed with jerrycans 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.
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.
A local resident, who did not want to be named, confirmed the attack.
“It was a gory sight. People who went to the hospital and saw the bodies shed tears. There were 42 bodies, most of them were students. Some of them had parts of their bodies blown off and badly burnt while others had gunshot wounds,” he said.
However, police authorities are claiming that the casualty number is 29 students and one teacher.
He said the attack was believed to be a reprisal by the Boko Haram Islamists for the killing of 22 sect members during a military raid in the town of Dogon Kuka on Thursday.
Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a school in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri last month, killing nine students, and a similar attack on a school in the city of Damaturu killed seven just days earlier.
Already, the attack has attracted condemnation across Nigeria, including from the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal.
The Yobe State Government had last week said it had spent over N4bn battling insurgents, pointing out that 209 schools had been razed down by the terrorists in various parts of the state.
Yobe State Deputy Governor, Abubakar Aliyu, told the visiting members of the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, led by Mr. Kabiru Turaki, that since November 2011, many lives had been lost.
He said property belonging to government institutions and individuals were destroyed by the insurgents, adding that the cost of the 209 schools destroyed was estimated at N2.5bn.