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Boko Haram Suspected in Deadly Suicide Bombing at Nigerian School Boko Haram Suspected in Deadly Suicide Bombing at Nigerian School
(about 3 hours later)
A suicide bomber dressed as a student infiltrated the morning assembly at a high school in northern Nigeria on Monday and detonated explosives in a backpack, killing almost 50 students and teachers, according to news reports. CONAKRY, Guinea — A suicide bomber disguised as a student detonated a bomb at a boarding school in northern Nigeria on Monday morning, killing nearly 50 boys who were between 10 and 20 years old, officials and witnesses said.
Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion quickly focused on the Boko Haram militant group, which has carried out similar attacks in that part of Nigeria. The group’s name translates roughly as “Western education is sinful.” The bomber was wearing a school uniform when he appeared at the morning assembly at the Government Senior Science Secondary School in Potiskum, according to Mohammed Abubakar, a local journalist who had just returned from the scene of the bombing. When the school prefect asked the bomber why he was not wearing the school’s badge, he knelt down and detonated the bomb, Mr. Abubakar said.
The bombing was one of the bloodiest attacks in months. Afterward, witnesses said, the school was a chaotic scene of dead and maimed children, and the local hospital was packed with the wounded.
Government forces rushed to the school, in the town of Potiskum in Yobe State, but angry residents throwing stones prevented them from reaching the site of the blast. A bomb killed almost 30 people in the same town last week. Northern Nigeria has long been crippled by an Islamist insurgency, and the militant group Boko Haram has targeted non-Koranic schools for at least the last three years, killing dozens of students and kidnapping hundreds of others. Monday’s bombing, which also wounded nearly 80, was one of the worst such attacks to date.
Many Nigerians are incensed at the military’s seeming inability to curb Boko Haram, which earlier this year kidnapped more than 200 girls from the town of Chibok in nearby Borno State. In Potiskum alone, a major market town on the principal east-west axis in Nigeria’s north, Boko Haram is believed to have attacked about 10 schools. In just over a year, five other schools in surrounding Yobe State have been assaulted by fighters believed to be members of the group. In February, at least 40 were killed at a boarding school in nearby Buni Yadi; in July of last year, 42 students were killed in an attack at a government school in a village near Potiskum.
In Potiskum, Reuters reported, residents accused government soldiers of opening fire on them after last week’s attack. Boko Haram did not claim responsibility for Monday’s bombing — it rarely does for individual attacks — but it has made what it calls “Western education” a particular focus of its bloody campaign against civilians and soldiers.
Witnesses said the blast on Monday left an assembly area at the Government Science Secondary School spattered with body parts. Despite the repeated school attacks and multiple student deaths, Nigeria’s military has not been deployed to guard the schools of the north, and there was no military presence before the blast at the Potiskum school Monday, Mr. Abubakar said.
The Associated Press quoted an unidentified morgue attendant as saying the dead appeared to be 11 to 20 years old. The school was “not safe. It is porous,” he said, adding that even the school gate was broken.
An additional 79 students were reported injured and rushed to a nearby hospital, which became so overcrowded that the wounded were packed two to a bed. Reuters quoted a nurse at the hospital as saying the dead included “a few” teachers along with their students. A resident who lives nearby, Yahaya Wakili, said there is “no fencing,” adding that “Everybody can come inside the school.”
Boko Haram has stepped up its onslaught since Nigerian authorities announced a cease-fire last month and forecast the liberation of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted in April. The only protection came from a few local guards armed with sticks, said Mr. Abubakar said.
In mid-October, Nigeria’s top military official announced a cease-fire with Boko Haram while another senior government official spoke of an imminent deal to release the schoolgirls, whose fate has become the focus of global attention and protest. Parents who gathered at the school after the bombing angrily told the military to leave, saying they “no longer had confidence” in the soldiers “because they were not able to protect their lives and property,” said Mr. Abubakar. Some news reports suggested rocks were thrown at the soldiers.
But the leader of the militant group, Abubakar Shekau, replied with a videotaped message which, according to Nigerian news accounts, dismissed any talk of a cease-fire and said the girls had accepted Islam and had been married off. Reflecting a rising tide of criticism against the Nigerian government, which has ceded large sections of territory to the Islamist militants in the northeast this year, the governor of Yobe State issued a strongly-worded statement Monday saying it was “not just enough for the federal government to condemn the almost daily rounds of violence.” Instead, he said “urgent action” was needed.
“Who agreed to a cease-fire? You are not serious,” he was quoted as saying, a message that seemed to have been underscored by Monday’s attack. It was just before 8 a.m. on Monday, and the students at the 2,000-student school had gathered for morning assembly. A slight man of around 25 wearing the school’s uniform appeared.
The Nigerian police put the number of dead on Monday at 47 but other accounts from morgue officials put the toll at 48. “He entered the assembly ground,” said Mr. Wakili. “They were waiting for the principal and the other teachers.”
In a recent report, Human Rights Watch said that at least 500 women and girls have been abducted by the militants since they began their insurgency in 2009. The report detailed abuses such as forced marriage, rape, death threats and enforced servitude. According to the accounts, the man was carring a heavy bag, prohibited under school rules. He told the prefect it was for carrying his books.
Mr. Shekau, the Boko Haram leader, has referred to these women as “slaves.” A student who was there, Mohammed Musa, said, “We were at the assembly ground waiting for our teachers to address us for the beginning of the week, and suddenly I heard a very heavy sound.”
The blast resounded throughout the neighborhood. “It was very, very loud,” said Mr. Wakili.
Abdulkareem Adam, another student, described “so many dead bodies littered on the ground.”
Mr. Abubakar, the local journalist who went to the school immediately after the blast, said, "I saw many wounded schoolchildren.” He described ghastly injuries and "people running away with wounds.”
The Nigerian government issued a statement condemning the bombing. But the blast is likely to raise further questions about the efficacy of a military counterinsurgency campaign that appears to be floundering in the face of an intensifying Boko Haram onslaught.
The Islamist group has made substantial gains in the three weeks since Nigeria officials announced that it had reached a supposed cease-fire with it.