The death toll in Monday the dastardly Boko Haram attack on the Federal Government College Buni Yadi, Gujba Local Government Area of Yobe State, has hit 59.

News Express had reported 40 dead in the attack but an update by Reuters news agency, quoting a hospital worker, put it at 59. According to Bala Ajiya, an official at the Specialist Hospital in the Yobe State capital, Damaturu, “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.”

The Boko Haram invaders, dressed in military uniforms, reportedly stormed the school in nine Hilux vans shortly before midnight Monday and blocked the entrance to the hostel, after which they gathered male students and opened fire on them. Yobe State Police Commissioner Sanusi A. Rufa’i said: “All the 29 killed were male students; none from the female students was killed.”

Though they spared the female students, the Boko Haram soldiers were said to have assembled them and warned them to go away and get married, threatening to return and kill all those who remain in the school.

To further demonstrate their opposition to Western education, the gunmen torched and destroyed 24 buildings, including hostels, administrative blocks and staff quarters. An extremist Islamic sect, Boko Haram roughly translates ‘Western education is sin.”

The attacked school is situated few kilometres away from the College of Agriculture Gujba where 40 students were killed by Boko Haram on September 29 last year in a similar operation.

Reacting to the FGC Buni Yadi massacre, presidential spokesman Reuben Abati said in a statement”

“The president wholly condemns the heinous, brutal and mindless killing of the guiltless students by deranged terrorists and fanatics who have clearly lost all human morality and descended to bestiality.

“He assures the nation that his administration will not relent in its ongoing efforts to end the scourge of terrorism in parts of the country which has sadly claimed more innocent lives today (yesterday).

“The Armed Forces of Nigeria and other security agencies will continue to prosecute the war against terror with full vigour, diligence and determination until the dark cloud of mass murder and destruction of lives and property is permanently removed from our horizon.”

•Photo shows parts of the Federal Govt. College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State, after the Boko Haram attack.

Update news