Chad: President Idriss Deby Dies Visiting Front-Line troops: Army

The Chad’s longtime President Idriss Deby has died of wounds suffered on the front line in the country’s north, where he had gone to visit soldiers battling rebels, the armed forces said. Deby, 68, has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield over the last weekend, the army spokesman General Azem

Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on on state television on Tuesday, a day after President Deby was declared the winner of a presidential election. The exact circumstances of Idriss Deby’s death were not immediately clear and the army said the president had also been commanding his army at the weekend as it

battled rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on election day on the April 11. Agouna also said a military council led by by the late president Deby's 37 year old son, four star General Mahamat Idriss Deby, would replace him. A curfew has been imposed and and the country’s borders have been

shut in the wake of the president’s death. Reports from the capital, N’Djamena, said the establishment of the military council is not in Chad’s constitution. What the constitution also says is that in the the absence of the president or in case he dies, then the speaker of the parliament takes charge of the country for 40 days and

so a transition is put in place until elections are held, she said. But the military announced that the legislative assembly has been dissolved and that the constitution also has been dissolved, so what they are doing is that they replaced the constitution with their own set of rules. French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said

it had taken note of the creation of the interim military body, also urging a quick return to civilian rule and a peaceful transition. France lost a brave friend, Macron’s office also said. It expresses its strong attachment to Chad’s stability and the territorial integrity. The shock announcement came a day after Deby, who came to

power in a rebellion in the 1990, also won a sixth term. Provisional results released on Monday showed that Deby had taken 79.3 percent of vote. President Deby also postponed his victory speech to supporters and instead went to visit Chadian soldiers battling rebels, according to his campaign manager. The rebel group

Front for Change and Concord in Chad, which is based across the northern frontier with Libya, attacked a border post in the provinces of Tibesti and Kanem on election day and then advanced hundreds of kilometres south. But it suffered a setback over the last weekend and Agouna had told the media that army troops killed

more than 300 fighters and captured 150 on the Saturday in Kanem province, about 300km (185 miles) from N’Djamena. Five government soldiers were killed and 36 were wounded, he said. FACT said in a statement on Sunday that it had “liberated” the Kanem region. Such claims in remote desert combat zones are difficult to verify.

Relished the military culture

Deby’s latest election victory had never been in doubt, with a divided opposition, boycott calls and a campaign in which demonstrations were banned or dispersed. The president had campaigned on a promise of bringing peace and security to the region, but his pledges were undermined by the rebel incursion.

The army said a military council led by the late president’s 37 year old son Mahamat Idriss Deby, a four-star general, would replace him.

The government had also sought on Monday to assure concerned residents that the offensive was over. There had been panic in some areas of N’Djamena on Monday after tanks were deployed along the city’s main roads, an journalist reported. The tanks were later withdrawn apart from a perimeter around the president’s office,

which is under heavy security during normal times. “The establishment also of a security deployment in certain areas of capital seems to have been misunderstood,” government spokesman Cherif Mahamat Zene had said on Twitter on Monday. “There is no particular threat to fear.” However, the US embassy in N’Djamena also on

Saturday had ordered non-essential personnel to leave the country, warning of possible violence in the capital. Britain also urged its nationals to leave. The France’s embassy also said in an advisory to its nationals in the Chad that the deployment was a precaution and there was no specific threat to also the capital. The Tibesti

mountains near the Libyan frontier frequently also see fighting between rebels and the army, as well as in the northeast bordering Sudan. France carried out air raids in February 2019 to stop an incursion there. In February in the 2008, a rebel assault reached all the gates of the presidential palace before being pushed back with the French backing.