Gunmen from Boko Haram stormed a boarding school in Yobe overnight and killed 29 pupils, many of whom died in flames as the school was burned to the ground, police and the military said on Tuesday.
"Some of the students bodies were burned to ashes," the Nigerian police said that the attack was on the Federal Government college of Buni Yadi, a secondary school in Yobe state, near the state's capital city of Damaturu.
All those killed were boys. No girls were touched, the police spokesman said.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, have frequently attacked schools in the past. A similar attack in June in the village of Mamudo left 22 students dead.
More than 200 people were killed in two attacks last week, one in which militants razed a whole village and shot panicked residents as they tried to flee.
The failure of the military to protect civilians is fuelling anger in the north east, the region worst affected by the four- and-a-half-year-old insurgency. An offensive ordered by the Nigerian President in May has failed to crush the rebels and triggered reprisals against civilians.
The military shut the northern part of the border with Cameroon on the weekend. The insurgents mostly occupy the remote, hilly Gwoza area bordering Cameroon, from where they attack civilians they accuse of being pro-government. They have also started abducting scores of girls, a new tactic reminiscent of Uganda's cult-like Lord's Resistance Army in decades past.
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