Students killed in dawn raid on school

The attackers set fire to a locked dormitory, shooting and slitting the throats of those who escaped through windows, survivors said. Some were burned alive.

Soldiers guarding a checkpoint near the government school were withdrawn hours before the attack, a spokesman for the governor of Yobe state said.

The attackers went to the female dormitories and told the young women to go home, get married and abandon Western education, survivors told governor Ibrahim Gaidam while he visited the Federal Government College at Buni Yadi, 45 miles south of the state capital, Damaturu.

The militants locked the door of one dormitory where male students were sleeping and then set it alight, slitting the throats of those who tried to climb out of windows and gunning down those who ran away, said teacher Adamu Garba.

Spokesman Abdullahi Bego said the entire complex of the relatively new school had been burned out by firebombs.

The governor would be asking questions about why the school was apparently left unprotected, he said.

Soldiers from Damaturu did not arrive until noon, hours after the attackers had finished their work and taken off, according to community leaders who said they buried the bodies of 29 victims. Most appeared to be aged between 15 and 20, Mr Bego said.

Nigeria’s military has reported arresting several soldiers accused of aiding and passing information to the terrorist network Boko Haram – whose nickname means “Western education is forbidden”.

President Goodluck Jonathan dismissed claims the military is losing the war to halt the four-year-old Islamic uprising in the north-east of Africa’s biggest oil producer.