CHAD’S PRESIDENT DIES
… Idriss Déby dies 'in clashes with rebels'
N’DJAMENA
- Chad's President Idriss Déby has died suddenly in clashes with rebels in the north of the country at the weekend, the army has said on state TV.
The 68-year-old son of a herder would have been one of the longest-serving leaders in the world, after provisional results on Monday showed him winning reelection this week from the April 11 election.
But his shock death cut his 30-year political career short and will likely throw Chadian politics into disarray.
He died from injuries sustained while fighting rebels this weekend in the country's restive north, the army said yesterday.
His death comes after elections this month that were marred by a rebel offensive launched in the north on election day. The army said on Monday it had killed 300 rebels and quashed the offensive.
The government and parliament have been dissolved. A military council will govern for the next 18 months.
Déby first came to power in an armed uprising in 1990.
Déby "breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield," an army general said in a statement read out on state TV.
He had gone to the front line at the weekend to visit troops battling rebels based across the border in Libya.
The military council will be led by the late president's son, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, 37, a four-star general.
The rebels, from a group calling itself Fact (the Front for Change and Concord in Chad), attacked a border post on election day. They were advancing on the capital, N'Djamena, several hundred kilometres to the south.
The clashes with the army began on Saturday. Déby was a long-time ally of France and other Western powers in the battle against jihadist groups in the Sahel region of Africa.
However, there has been growing unhappiness over his government's management of Chad's oil resources.
During the election he campaigned on a platform of bringing peace and security to the region.