Islamic terrorists, who were dressed in Nigerian military uniforms attacked a Nigerian college students Sunday, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in their dorms, while shooting those who were trying to flee, witnesses say.
“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,” one surviving student, who would only give his first name of Idris, told Reuters.
Perhaps as many as 50 students may have been killed in the attack, which began at about 1 a.m. in rural Gujba, Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture, told The Associated Press.
“They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels, they opened fire at them,” he said. The extremists also torched classrooms.
Nigeria State Police Commissioner Sanusi Rufai told Reuters that he believed that the terrorist group Boko Haram was behind the attack, but did not give a specific reason.
Boko Haram is aiming to establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria and has ramped up attacks on civilians, which they view as revenge for a Nigerian military offensive against the group.
Idi Mato said he could not give an exact death toll, because security forces are still recovering bodies of students, who were mostly between the ages of 18 and 22. The Nigerian military has collected 42 bodies and transported 18 wounded students to Damaturu Specialist Hospital, which is 25 miles north, said a military intelligence official according to Reuters.
The extremists rode into the college in two double-cabin pickup all-terrain vehicles and on several motorcycles, with some dressed in Nigerian military camouflage uniforms, according to a surviving student, Ibrahim Mohammed. He said they appeared to know the exact layout of the college, attacking the four male hostels, yet avoiding the one hostel reserved for women.
“We ran into the bush, nobody is left in the school now,” Mohammed said.
Almost all those killed were Muslims, as is the makeup of the college’s student body, said Adamu Usman, another survivor from Gujba who was helping with the wounded at the hospital.
Screaming and crying friends and relatives gathered outside the hospital morgue, where rescue workers laid out bloody bodies in an orderly row on the lawn as a makeshift ID line for family members to identify their loved ones.
One body had its fists clenched to the chest, as if he died protecting or attempting to protect himself and others. Another had hands clasped under the chin, as if he was praying at the end. A third had arms raised in surrender, but it obviously did not deter the Islamic terrorists from doing what they do best, which is to cowardly kill unarmed, innocent people to their cause.
Provost Idi Mato confirmed the school’s other 1,000 enrolled students have already evacuated, or rather fled the college.
He said there were no security forces stationed at the college despite government assurances that they would be deployed. The state commissioner for education, Mohammmed Lamin, called a news conference two weeks ago urging all schools to reopen and promising protection from soldiers and police.
Most schools in the area closed after militants on July 6 killed 29 pupils and a teacher, burning some alive in their hostels, at Mamudo outside Damaturu.
Northeastern Nigeria is under a military state of emergency to battle an Islamic uprising prosecuted by Boko Haram militants who have killed more than 1,700 people since 2010, all in their extremist quest to install an Islamic state. This is being attempted despite the fact that half the country’s 160 million citizens are Christian, who will no doubt be in grave danger if Islamists are successful. Boko Haram literally translates into “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa language.
President Barack Obama back on Tuesday described Boko Haram as one of the most vicious terrorist organizations in the world, speaking at a meeting with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, during which both reassured each other of their commitment to fight terrorism.
Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, last week published a video to prove he is alive and prove false military claims that they might have killed him in an ongoing crackdown. Still, government and security officials claim they are winning their war on terror in the northeast, but Sunday’s attack and others squash those assurances.
The Islamic extremists Boko Haram have killed at least 30 other civilians in the past week. Twenty-seven people died in separate attacks Wednesday and Thursday night on two villages of Borno state, which is near the northeast border with Cameroon, according to the chairman of the Gamboru-Ngala local government council, Modu-Gana Bukar Sheriiff.
Also, more horrific news came Thursday, when police said suspected Islamic militants killed a pastor, his son and a village head, then proceeded to torch their Christian church in Dorawa, which is about 100 kilometers from Damaturu. They said the gunmen used explosives to set fire to the church and five homes.
Unsurprisingly, farmers and government officials are fleeing threats of imminent attacks from Boko Haram in the area of the Gwoza Hills, a mountainous area with caves that shelter the militants despite repeated aerial bombardments by the military.
A local government official said there had been a series of attacks in recent weeks and threats of more. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his life, said Gwoza town was deserted when he visited it briefly under heavy security escort on Thursday.
He said militants had chased medical officers from the government hospital in Gwoza, which had been treating some victims of attacks. He also said they had burned down three public schools in the area.
The official said the Gwoza local government has set up offices in Maiduguri, the state capital to the north.
More than 30,000 people have fled the terrorist attacks to neighboring Cameroon and Chad and the uprising combined with the military emergency has forced farmers from their fields and vendors from their markets.
The attacks come as Nigeria prepares to celebrate 52 years of independence from Britain on Tuesday and amid political jockeying in the run up to presidential elections next year with many northern Muslim politicians saying they do not want another term for Jonathan, who is from the predominantly Christian south.
