No fewer than 19 persons were confirmed dead and 23 others injured when four Boko Haram suicide bombers struck residents of Borno State capital, Maiduguri, on Tuesday night, a police source confirmed.

The state police commissioner, Damian Chukwu, announced this to newsmen at one of the locations where the bombing took place, adding that most of the victims were members of the Civilian-JTF.

“Twelve Civilian-JTF operatives were killed in all the attack and the rest were civilian victims”, Chukwu said.

The police chief said the other seven civilians who were numbered among the dead were killed while mourning the death of the 12 Civilian-JTF operatives.

“The suicide bombers attacked the crowd of mourners and killed seven of them, leaving many others injured”, he added.

Danbatta Bello who is the spokesman of the Civilian-JTF, said the attackers came while his colleagues were on duty.

He said: “A teenage female suicide bomber actually crept to the sandbag post of our boys at Molai and before they could realise what was happening, she detonated explosives on her body and killed three of our boys.

“That happened simultaneously with the one that occurred at the tea vendor’s where seven of our members who took their time off to eat their dinner were killed”.

“Another one took place not far away from where the first blast took place which killed one of our operatives that were trying to stop her. While the fourth blast that happened at Jiddumeri also took the life of one of our operatives as well.

“We lost 12 of our operatives in all.”

Mourners later gathered to bury the dead. This suicide incidence on Tuesday is the latest in a coordinated attacks by Boko Haram in Maiduguri in 2017.

Recall Boko Haram terrorism has led to the death of at least 100,000 persons, mainly in North-eastern Nigeria since 2009 when the uprising started.