50 students killed in Nigerian militant attack

EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT : In this image taken with a mobile phone, rescue workers and family members gather to identify the shrouded bodies of students killed following an attack by Islamist extremist on an agricultural college in Gujba, Nigeria, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013, Suspected Islamic extremists attacked the Yobe State College of Agriculture early Sunday, gunning down students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms, leaving some 50 students dead in the attack according to college Provost Molima Idi Mato. The attack is seen as part of an ongoing Islamic uprising in northeastern Nigeria prosecuted by Boko Haram militants in their declared quest to install an Islamic state. (AP Photo)

Suspected Islamist extremists attacked an agricultural college in the dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms, the school’s provost said, reporting the latest violence in northeastern Nigeria’s ongoing uprising.

As many as 50 students may have been killed in the assault that began at about 1 a.m. Sunday in rural Gujba, he told AP.

“They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels, they opened fire at them,” he said.

The military has collected 42 bodies and transported 18 wounded students to a hospital, said an official.

The extremists rode into the college in two double-cabin pickup all-terrain vehicles and on motorcycles, some dressed in military uniforms, a student, Ibrahim Mohammed, said. He said they appeared to know the layout of the college, attacking the four men’s hostels but avoiding the one hostel reserved for women.

“We ran into the bush, nobody is left in the school now,” he said. Almost all those killed were Muslims, as is the college’s student body, said a survivor.

Most schools in the area closed after militants on July 6 killed 29 pupils and a teacher, burning some alive in their hostels, at Mamudo outside Damaturu.