Islamic extremists shoot dead 29 students and a teacher at a boarding school in Nigeria

At least 29 students and a teacher have been killed after Islamic extremists attacked on a boarding school in northeast Nigeria.
Survivors, who are being treated for burns and gunshots wounds, say some students were burned alive in the pre-dawn attack today on the Government Secondary School in Mamudo town in Yobe state.
Farmer Malam Abdullahi wept over the bodies of his two sons, aged ten and 12.
'That’s it, I’m taking my other boys out of school,' he told The Associated Press. He said he had three younger children in a nearby school.


He said there was no protection for students despite the deployment of thousands of troops since the government declared a state of emergency mid-May in three north-eastern states.
'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.
Dozens of schools have been torched and unknown scores of students killed among more than 1,600 victims murdered by extremists since 2010.
The attackers set fire to buildings and shot pupils as they tried to flee, according to Reuters. Several of the students were being treated for burns, he added.
It was the deadliest of three attacks on schools since the military launched an offensive in May to try to crush Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent group whose nickname translates as 'Western education is sinful' in the northern Hausa language.


Potiskum is in Yobe state, one of three covered by a state of emergency declared by President Goodluck Jonathan in May, when he ordered extra troops into the region to try to quell a rebellion seen as the biggest security threat to Africa's top oil producer.
Police responded to queries by email as the mobile phone network was cut to much of the northeast as part of the state of emergency.
The hit-and-run strikes have raised fears the seven-week-old military offensive has pushed the militants fighting for a breakaway Islamic state in northeast Nigeria into hiding, but failed to stop them launching devastating attacks.
Suspected Islamist militants opened fire on a school in Nigeria's northeastern city of Maiduguri last month, killing nine students, and a similar attack on a school in the city of Damaturu killed seven just days earlier.
Nigerian forces say their offensive has enabled them to wrest back control of the remote northeast from Boko Haram, destroy key bases and arrest scores of suspects.