Boko Haram militants suspected of being behind attack during a high school assembly which has killed at least 48 students

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A suicide bomber disguised in a school uniform set off a backpack full of explosives during an assembly at a high school in Nigeria on Monday, killing at least 48 students and wounding 79 others.

It was the latest attack by suspected Boko Haram militants who kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls earlier this year.

Soldiers rushed to the bloody scene in Potiskum, capital of the north-eastern Yobe state, but were chased away by a stone-throwing crowd angry at the military’s inability to halt a five-year Islamic insurgency that has targeted schools and killed thousands.

The militants have intensified the frequency and deadliness of attacks since the government announced last month that the group – whose name means “Western education is sinful” in the local Hausa language – had agreed to a ceasefire and the schoolgirls would be released imminently. Boko Haram’s leader has denied any ceasefire deal and the girls have not been freed.

Monday’s bombing came a week after a suicide attack in Potiskum killed 30 people taking part in a religious procession by moderate Muslims.

Some 2,000 students had gathered for a weekly assembly at the Government Technical Science College when the explosion ripped through the school hall.

Speaking from a hospital bed where he was being treated for head wounds, Musa Ibrahim Yahaya, 17, said: “We were waiting for the principal to address us, around 7:30am, when we heard a deafening sound and I was blown off my feet. People started screaming and running. I saw blood all over my body.”

Survivors said the bomber hid the explosives in a backpack. Months ago Nigeria’s military reported finding a bomb factory where explosives were being sewn into backpacks in the northern city of Kano.

Hospital records showed 48 bodies and many body parts were brought to the morgue. Seventy-nine students were admitted, many with serious injuries that may require amputations, health workers said. The hospital was so overcrowded that some patients were crammed two to a bed.

The victims all appeared to be between the ages of 11 and 20, a morgue attendant said.

Garba Alhaji, the father of one of the wounded students, said the high school did not have proper security. “I strongly blame the Yobe state government for not fencing the school,” he said, adding that just three months ago a bomb was discovered in the school and removed by an anti-bomb squad.

The US strongly condemned the attack. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: “Our sympathies and thoughts are with the victims and their families of these latest egregious assaults on innocent civilians by those bent on fomenting violence, extremism and insecurity in north-eastern Nigeria and the region.”

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the suicide bombing and expressed outrage at “the frequency and brutality of attacks against educational institutions in the north”.

The Yobe state government ordered the immediate closure of all government schools in the area.

Potiskum was once the home of one of Africa’s biggest cattle markets and a booming grain market that attracted traders from neighbouring countries before a state of emergency was declared in May 2013 in Yobe and two other northern Nigerian states, where Boko Haram has attacked schools and villages and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes in its fight to impose an Islamic state.

The governor, Ibrahim Gaidam, said he was heartbroken by the loss of life during Monday’s attack, and denounced the failure of emergency rule. “Instead of forcing insurgents and criminals to flee, the insurgents are forcing innocent people to flee and making life miserable,” he said.

Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, owes an urgent explanation to people living under a state of emergency while attacks increase, the governor said. Jonathan, who is running for re-election in February, has promised more security for schools.

Boko Haram attracted international outrage with the April kidnapping of 276 mostly Christian schoolgirls as they were taking exams at a boarding school in northern Nigeria. Dozens of the girls managed to escape, but 219 remain missing. Boko Haram has said that the girls have all converted to Islam and been married off to extremist fighters.

• This article was amended on 12 November 2014. An earlier version of the headline and one mention in the text misspelled the town of Potiskum as Potsikum.

