TerrorismBoko Haran Islamists kill 78 college students

Leadership of Boko Haram terror group // Source: lhrtimes.com

Boko Haram, the name of the Nigerian Jihadist Islamist insurgency group, means “Western Education is Sinful.” True to its name, the group has routinely attacked high schools and colleges in Nigeria, killing a large number of students and teachers.

The latest attack came Saturday night, when Boko Haram militants attacked an agricultural college in northeastern Nigeria, killing seventy-eight students.

The New York Times reports that the attackers drove into the campus of the Yobe State College of Agriculture, in a rural area just south of Damaturu, the state capital. They entered the dorm building after midnight, and then opened bedroom doors and fired in the dark toward the beds where students were sleeping.

The attack was the second large-scale massacre of civilians by Boko Haram in as many weeks. The group killed 143 civilians in the northeastern town of Benisheik on 17 September.

The Nigerian military is in the middle of wide-ranging military campaign, launched in May, against the Islamists. The large cities on three northeastern Nigerian states have been largely cleared of terrorists, but this is not the case in rural areas, and thousands of civilians have escaped to neighboring Niger to escape the violence.

Boko Haram’s campaign against non-Islamic education also includes burning of schools.

In early July the Islamists killed forty-two students in a secondary school in the town of Mamudo.

A civil servant who gave his name only as Ibrahim, for fear of retribution, told the Times in a telephone interview that it is not clear what the attackers want. “Nobody can explain what they want,” he said. “All of the students that died today are Muslims. No single Christian was killed. This is not a religious war. These people that perpetrated this call themselves Muslims. But this is against the teachings of Islam.”