(Reuters) – At least 35 people, most of them students, were killed when a bomb ripped through a school assembly in Nigeria’s northeastern town of Potiskum on Monday, a hospital official said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Yobe State, a territory that has been hit by Sunni Muslim Boko Haram rebels during a five-year insurgency seen as the main security threat to Africa’s leading oil producer.
Mariam Ibrahim, a teacher at the Government Science Secondary School (GSS) in Potiskum told Reuters the bomb went off as she was arriving and students were having their usual morning briefing.
Potiskum resident Aliyu Abubakar said he heard the explosion when he was dropping off his two sons at a nearby Islamic college. “One of my sons fell down, I came out dragged him in and we drove off back home,” he said.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful” in the local Hausa language, has targeted schools, abducted students and killed thousands in its campaign to carve out an Islamist state.
Potiskum General Hospital’s accident and emergency ward had received 35 bodies, an official there told Reuters.
“There are some (others) that are critically injured and I am sure the death toll will rise,” another teacher said, asking to remain anonymous.
