Chad’s president of more than 30 years has died of his wounds on Tuesday, days after being caught up in clashes between government forces and rebels in the north of the country.
President Idriss Deby who was newly re-elected to a sixth term was commanding his troops fighting rebels over the weekend, the army spokesman said on state television.
Army spokesman, General Azem Bermandoa Agouna announced the death of 69-year old President Deby, who has been in power for 30 years.
“The President of the Republic, Head of State, Supreme Head of the Armed Forces, Idriss Deby Itno, has just breathed his last in defending the territorial integrity on the battlefield. It is with deep bitterness that we announce to the Chadian people the death on Tuesday April 20, 2021 of the Marshal of Chad.”
Poised for a sixth term at the head of this Sahelian nation, which he has led since 1990, Deby, a candidate of the ruling Patriotic Movement of Salvation (MPS) was on Monday evening declared the winner in the first round of the presidential election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) said he had polled 79, 32 percent of the votes.
Since his death, a statement has emerged suggesting that Deby’s government and parliament have been scrapped while a military council is being named to run the country for 18 months.
Idriss Deby had been re-elected amid a rebellion launched on Election Day, April 11, which was bloodily suppressed, resulting in the deaths of 300 people.
The ‘Front pour l’Alternance et la Concorde au Tchad’ (FACT), a political and military movement fighting the regime of President Idriss Deby, had entered Chadian territory from Libya.
The objective of FACT, according to a document from the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA), is “the achievement of the fundamental aspirations of the Chadian people (…) and the advent of political change.”
Led by Mahamat Mahdi Ali, a former member of the Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJT) and the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), the fighting wing of the movement has had several clashes with the army.
The fighting continued on Sunday and into the morning of Monday, April 19.
The authorities claimed they had routed them, but Mahamat Mahdi Ali made a broadcast on Tuesday morning on Radio France Internationale (RFI) that his columns have made “a strategic retreat.”
He claimed that his troops still control a perimeter around the towns of Zouarke and Wour, about 400 kilometers south of the border with Libya, where the rebels are usually based.
CD/fss/as/APA