Five bodies retrieved at Sabon Gari school explosion site, as evacuation exercise continues
The explosion that rocked a school at Sabon Gari, Kano Tuesday morning has been attributed to an impact from a welding gas cylinder.
Nigerian Sketch reported earlier that an alleged suicide bomber attacked the school and detonated the bomb attached to his body.
Parents, especially women, were seen running towards the school to secure their wards, while others who have children in other schools around Sabon Gari area made frantic efforts to take their children home.
Some pupils were seen covered in dust while others have blood on their bodies.
A woman, Blessing Okafor, who first spoke with Nigerian Sketch said she lives near the school an heard the explosion. She said she does not know the cause but the explosion was so loud that it shook the surrounding areas.
Not a bomb?
Security operatives in Kano State have dispelled the insinuation that the explosion was cause by any bomb, and that there was no suicide bomber involved.
They said the explosion, which brought down part of the school building, was caused by a welding gas cylinder.
Kano State Commissioner of Police, CP Sama’ila Dikko, confirmed the explosion but said it was not a bomb blast.
“It wasn’t a bomb blast. It’s a gas cylinder explosion,” Dikko said.
“The seller’s shop is on the ground floor of the building where the school is located. So, when the cylinder exploded, it brought down the building and the pupils got injured. There wasn’t a bomb blast.”
Evacuation
Beyond the earlier scramble to remove children from the school by parents, official efforts to evacuate the partly collapsed building continued till afternoon. Other parts of the building had to be demolished in order to better access to the inner part of the school where more people were believed to be trapped.
As of the time this report was published, five dead people were said to have been retrieved, according to the state commissioner of information.
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