(Huffington Post) – After Pakistan, Nigeria and South Sudan, a fourth country has now become the most recent victim of heinous terrorist attacks on students and educational establishments. Today, when gunmen burst into Garissa University College in Kenya, they copied a tactic used by Islamic State and Al-Qaeda-linked groups in Africa and Asia. By taking hostages at the church service and then shooting innocent students — as one witness claimed the gunmen did — they have wreaked havoc in a town only 90 miles from the Somali border. This shootout and the kidnapping are part of a new disturbing pattern whereby terrorists crave the publicity that comes from violating innocent young people even in the precincts of their own schools. This attack comes nearly a year after Boko Haram kidnapped over 200 school girls in Chibok, Nigeria, a similar incursion in Pakistan, where several months ago some 130 students were killed and in South Sudan, where children are being abducted from schools to serve as child soldiers.
