30 killed in school attack

POTISKUM, Nigeria (AP):Islamic militants attacked a boarding school in northeast Nigeria before dawn yesterday, killing 29 students and one teacher.

Some of the pupils were burned alive in the latest school attack blamed on a radical terror group.

Parents screamed in anguish as they tried to identify the charred and gunshot victims.

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.

"That's it, I'm taking my other boys out of school," he told The Associated Press as he wept over the two corpses. He said he had three younger children in a nearby school.

NOT SAFE

"It's not safe," he said. "The gunmen are attacking schools and there is no protection for students despite all the soldiers."

Survivors at the Potiskum General Hospital and its mortuary said gunmen attacked Government Secondary School about 3 a.m. yesterday.

The gunmen are believed to be from the Boko Haram sect whose name means "Western education is sacrilege."

"We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me," said 15-year-old Musa Hassan.

He put his arm up in defence, and suffered a gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right hand, the one he uses to write with.

He said the gunmen came armed with jerry cans 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.