Boko Haram kill 40 students
DAMATURU, Nigeria, Sept 29, 2013 (AFP) -Boko Haram gunmen on Sunday opened fire in a college dormitory in northeast Nigeria as the students slept, killing 40, in the latest massacre blamed on the Islamist insurgents.
All of the dead were students of the College of Agriculture in the town of Gujba in Yobe state, the area governor said in a statement.
The early morning attack was carried out by “Boko Haram terrorists who went into the school and opened fire on students” while they were sleeping, the military spokesman in Yobe, Lazarus Eli, told AFP.
Salamu Ibrahim, a 23-year-old student at the college, said dozens of gunmen took part in the killing, bursting into dorm rooms and firing indiscriminately in the dark.
“The attackers went berserk,” he told AFP in Yobe's capital Damaturu, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) away, where he fled
All of the dead were students of the College of Agriculture in the town of Gujba in Yobe state
along with hundreds of other students.
“They were fully armed with sophisticated rifles, and improvised explosives,” and razed several college buildings after leaving the dorms, he said.
The office of Yobe Governor Ibrahim Gaidam put the death toll at 40, with four others injured.
At the Damaturu Specialist Hospital, hundreds of relatives of those who attended the college had “thronged” to see whether their families members were among the dead, said a hospital official who requested anonymity.