Abuja: An unidentified assailant fired a grenade at an Islamic school in the central Nigerian city of Jos, an area plagued by sectarian violence, killing a 10-year-old boy, media reported on Tuesday.
Officials and residents described a man dressed in red firing what appeared to be a rocket launcher at the school in the Bukuru area of Jos.
“An Islamic school was the target of the attack,” said Pam Ayuba, the spokesman for the governor of Plateau State, where Jos is the capital.
Police spokesman Emmanuel Abuh said the assailant fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) from the Jero road that runs adjacent to the school and marks an informal dividing line between a Muslim and Christian neighbourhood in the southern part of Jos.
“A 10-year-old boy was hit on the head… and he died,” said Abuh, adding that the attacker successfully fled the scene.
The victim was a bystander and not enrolled at the school, where students were studying for exams when they came under attack, according to locals.
The school, Nurul Islam, is a seminary that combines secular, Western-style education with an Islamic curriculum.
Abdullahi told AFP that the attacker escaped into the nearby Christian neighbourhood, but officials could not confirm that account.
After the shooting, rival youth mobs set up barricades on the road but the military intervened before clashes erupted, Mustapha said.
The governor’s spokesman charged that the “attack is a deliberate effort to distract the security services.”
Tension is high in Plateau state after the military revealed plans to launch campaigns to root out gunmen suspected of belonging to a mainly Muslim group of herdsmen accused of killing more than 100 people earlier this month.
Jos has also been struck by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, responsible for scores of attacks in northern and central Nigeria since mid-2009.
Aside from violence involving the Fulani, Jos has for several years seen sporadic clashes between Muslim and Christian groups, which have left thousands dead.
Plateau state is in Nigeria’s “Middle Belt” region, on the dividing line between the mainly Christian south and majority Muslim north in Africa’s most populous country.
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