NIGERIA : ENFANTS BRULES VIFS PAR LES MUZZ

Children burned alive during Islamist attack on Nigerian boarding school

AP

A doctor at the Potiskum General Hospital, Nigeria, tends to a student wounded in an attack on a boarding school on Saturday, July 6, 2013, by Islamist militants.

By The Associated Press Published: Saturday, July 6, 2013

POTISKUM, Nigeria

 — Islamic militants attacked a boarding school before dawn Saturday, dousing a dormitory in fuel and lighting it as students slept, survivors said. 

At least 30 people were killed in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria's embattled northeast. 

Authorities blamed the violence on Boko HaraM, a radical group whose name means “Western education is sacrilege.”

 The militants have been behind a series of recent attacks on schools in the region, including one in which gunmen opened fire on children taking exams in a classroom. 

“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me,” Musa Hassan, 15, said of the assault on Government Secondary School in Mamudo village in Yobe state. 

He put his arm up in defense and suffered a gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right, writing hand. His life was spared when the militants moved on after shooting him.

Hassan said the gunmen came armed with containers of fuel that they used to torch the school's administrative block and one of the dormitories. 

“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. 

At the morgue of Potiskum General Hospital, a few miles from the scene of the attack, parents screamed in anguish as they attempted to identify the victims, many charred beyond recognition. Some parents don't know if their children survived or died. 

Farmer Malam Abdullahi found 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.

“The gunmen are attacking schools, and there is no protection for students despite all the soldiers,” Abdullahi said as he wept over the two corpses. He said he is withdrawing his three remaining sons from another school. 

By Saturday afternoon, thousands of students had fled several boarding schools around Potiskum, leaving deserted campuses in fear of more attacks. 

Islamic militants from Boko Haram and breakaway groups have killed more than 1,600 civilians in suicide bombings and other attacks since 2010, according to an Associated Press count.

Read more: http://triblive.com/usworld/world/4318388-74/militants-attack-killed?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+alltribstories+%28TribLIVE+News%29#ixzz2YN0wffFM
Follow us: @triblive on Twitter | triblive on Facebook
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!