At least 46 students have been killed by a suicide
bomber at a school assembly in the north-eastern
Nigerian town of Potiskum, police have said.

The explosion at a boys' school in the town is
believed to have been caused by a suicide bomber
dressed as a student.
The militant group Boko Haram is believed to have
carried out the attack, police said.

The group has targeted schools during a deadly
five-year insurgency aimed at establishing an
Islamic state.
It is waging a sustained campaign to prevent
children from going to school. It believes girls
should not attend school and boys should only
receive an Islamic education.

'Devastating attack'
The explosion ripped through the assembly hall at
the Government Science Secondary School,
reports say.
Police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu told the BBC
Hausa service the attack had left 47 people dead,
including the suicide bomber. Another 79 were
wounded.


Analysis: Will Ross, BBC Nigeria Correspondent


By setting off the bomb during the morning
assembly, the militants clearly aimed to kill as
many students as possible.
Few of the attacks here are ever claimed by any
group but Boko Haram will once again be
suspected. The jihadists have carried out
particularly brutal attacks on schools before.
Chibok is known in many parts of the world
because of April's mass abduction of girls from
that remote village. But there have been many
other horrific attacks on schools which have
received less attention - including last February's
raid on Buni Yadi, in Yobe State.


Dozens of boys were burnt to death, shot or killed
with knives in the dormitory. Female students were
spared but told to never attend school again, go
off and get married. Boko Haram wants the
education of boys to be limited to strict Koranic
studies only.

The insecurity in the north-east is so rampant,
with entire towns and villages now in the jihadists'
hands, it will be extremely hard for other
bombings to be prevented.


"At about 08:00am [07:00 GMT], a suicide bomber
disguised himself as one of the male students and
while the school was holding its normal assembly,
the bomb went off," Mr Ojukwu said.
He added that police were investigating the
explosion.
One student told the BBC he saw the mutilated
bodies of fellow students at the scene, where
emergency operations were ongoing. A resident
reported seeing parents wailing at the sight of their
children's bodies at the hospital.
Soldiers who attended the site of the explosion
were met with fury by the assembled crowds who
pelted them with stones and accused them of not
doing enough to halt Boko Haram's insurgency.
A grieving relative told the BBC: "My brother, a
student in the school, died in the blast. He was
about 16 years old... We buried him at about
11:00am [10:00 GMT] today."

"The government needs to be more serious about
the fight against Boko Haram because it is getting
out of control," he added.
Potiskum is no stranger to attacks - last week a
suicide bombing there targeted Shia Muslims
Schools in Yobe state have been frequently
attacked by Boko Haram militants.

The state is one of three in Nigeria that have been
placed under a state of emergency as a result of
the group's activities.
Potiskum, one of the largest towns in Yobe, has
been targeted before by Boko Haram.
Last week, a suicide bombing killed 15 people in
the town.

The bomber joined a religious procession of the
rival Shia Muslim sect, before blowing himself up.
In April, Boko Haram sparked global outrage by
abducting more than 200 girls from a boarding
school in Chibok town in Borno state.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has
dismissed government claims to have agreed a
ceasefire, under which the girls would be released.
He says the children have converted to Islam, are
learning to memorise the Koran and have been
married off.

source:BBC website

hmmmm...may God help us in dz country ooo