Protesters shot dead

Chadian security forces opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the country’s two largest cities yesterday, killing at least 60 people, a government spokesman and a morgue official said. Authorities imposed a curfew after the violence, which came amid demonstrations in the central African nation against interim leader Mahamat Idriss Deby’s two-year extension of his power. Samira Daoud, Amnesty International’s regional director for West and Central Africa, called on the Chadian authorities “to immediately cease the excessive use of force against protesters”. At the main reference hospital in the capital N’Djamena, overwhelmed doctors tended to scores of people with gunshot wounds. Some of the wounded were taken to Liberty Hospital by army vehicles and bore signs of torture, witnesses said. Demonstrators had begun to blow whistles at 3am throughout the capital of N’Djamena. Police fired tear gas but the crowds kept advancing. It was then that security forces opened fire.