Also, some surviving victims of the attack recounted their ordeal on Wednesday.
According to a report, Aliyu Ayuba, a JSS 3 student, fled the scene with a bullet in his back. He said the assailants; young men and boys in military uniforms and plain clothes, ordered the students to gather in one place and started shooting sporadically. Aliyu added that all his roommates were killed and burnt inside the hostel.
Another survivor said, “I was shot in my left leg, while I was sleeping. When I woke up, I could not walk and was later taken to the girls’ hostel where the insurgents gathered us with the female students. They selected some of the female students and went away with them, while they left some of us groaning in pain from gunshots.”
A teacher, Mallam Samaila Idris, narrated how the attackers drove into the school premises in nine Hilux vans at around midnight on Monday; their bloody operation lasted for over five hours.
He said that those who stayed at the school thought the assailants were military personnel, until the shooting started. Idris added that those in the staff quarters fled before the terrorists started the fire.
A state hospital official said the death toll had risen from 43 to 59.
“Fresh bodies have been brought in. More bodies were discovered in the bush after the students who had escaped with bullet wounds died from their injuries,” Bala Ajiya of the Damaturu Specialist Hospital said late on Wednesday.
Ajiya added that the school’s 24 buildings, including staff quarters, were completely burned to the ground by the attackers during the onslaught.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Defence and Army had passed a resolution directing the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Kenneth Minimah, to relocate his office to Borno State in order to effectively monitor the war against the insurgents in the North –East.
In New York, United States, the UN, through its Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, expressed worry over incessant attacks on places of learning and advised that the perpetrators be “swiftly brought to justice.”
“The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the increasing frequency and brutality of attacks against educational institutions in the North of the country. He reiterates that no objective can justify such violence,”the global body added in a statement.
One of its agencies, UNICEF also, expressed outrage at the brutal killings, saying it was “unacceptable under any circumstances”
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this vicious attack on students,” its Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Manuel Fontaine, said in a statement.
“Many young lives were lost. Many more students and teachers are deprived of their right to education. Attacks on children and schools are unacceptable under any circumstances,” the UN agency added.
It said that, “When a school is under attack and students become targets, not only their lives are shattered –the future of the nation is stolen.”
The Senate Committee on Defence and Army, which also expressed disgust over the attack, passed a resolution directing the COAS to relocate his office temporarily to the 7th Division of Nigerian Army in Maiduguri for urgent and appropriate steps to quell Boko Haram’s repeated attacks on the North-East.
The committee also directed the Army boss to adopt new methods for curbing the sect’s excesses in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states.
The committee led by Senator George Sekibo also resolved that all schools and health institutions in the country should be provided with special security.
It gave express approval to the 2014 budget of the Army and told the COAS that what was of utmost priority to it now was stemming the killings in the North-East and not the budget details.
The committee also called on Jonathan to rise up to the challenge by mobilising resources for the Armed Forces to fight the insurgents decisively.
Story by Niyi Odebode, John Alechenu, John Ameh, Olusola Fabiyi, Sunday Aborisade, Ihuoma Chiedozie, Godwin Isenyo and Vincent Obia.
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