At least 48 school students
have been killed in Nigeria after a suicide bomber apparently dressed in school
uniform detonated explosives in a packed assembly meeting.
Around 2,000 students - some
as young as 11 - were waiting to hear the principal's Monday morning address
when the blast ripped through the crowd. Eyewitnesses spoke of horrific scenes
as body parts were scattered all over the school compound. The mood then turned
to anger, with soldiers who turned up to secure the area pelted with rocks by
locals, who accused them of failing to protect the area against terrorist
attack.
The bombing took place at the
Government Technical Science College in the city of Potiskum, a town of 200,000
in north-east Nigeria's Yobe state and a regular target of attacks by the Boko
Haram Islamist group. Only last week, a suicide bomb in the same city killed 30
people taking part in a religious procession of moderate Muslims.
Musa Ibrahim Yahaya, survivor
of the school bombing, spoke to the AP news agency from his hospital bed, where
he was being treated for head wounds. "We were waiting for the principal
to address us, around 7:30 a.m., when we heard a deafening sound and I was
blown off my feet," he said. "People started screaming and running, I
saw blood all over my body."
Aliyu Abubakar, a Potiskum
resident, said he heard the explosion when he was dropping off his two sons at
a nearby Islamic college. "One of my sons fell down, I came out dragged
him in and we drove off back home," he said.
A morgue attendant said 48
bodies were brought to the hospital and all appeared to be between the ages of
11 and 20 years old. Hospital workers said the scale of the injuries was so bad
that some of the injured were likely to need amputations.
Survivors said the bomber
appeared to have hidden the explosives in a type of rucksack popular with
students. Nigeria's military recently reported finding a bomb factory where
explosives were being sewn into rucksacks in the northern city of Kano.
While there has so far been no
claim of responsibility for the attack, suspicion will fall on Boko Haram,
which has carried out numerous bombings and Mumbai-style gun attacks during the
five-year insurgency it has fought in its bid to turn an Islamic caliphate in
northern Nigeria. The group, whose name roughly translates as "Western
education is sinful", has focused many of its attacks on schools.