Chad’s president killed, son takes over
Chad’s President Idriss Deby Itno has died on the battlefield while battling against rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on Election Day.
The shocking announcement came only the day after the 68-year-old was proclaimed the winner of a presidential election that had given him a sixth term in office.
The army on Tuesday said Deby, who had spent three decades in power died while protecting his country.
The army’s spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna was in a statement read out on state television saying “Deby “has just breathed his last breath defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield.”
Deby, 68, had ruled Chad with an iron fist for three decades, but was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the troubled Sahel region.
The army said a military council led by the late president’s 37-year-old son Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, a four-star general, would replace him.
On Monday, the army had claimed a “great victory” in its battle against the rebels from neighbouring Libya, saying it had killed 300 fighters, with the loss of five soldiers in its own ranks during eight days of combat.
Following his death, a four-star general who is a son of the slain president Idriss Deby Itno will replace him at the head of a military council, the army announced Tuesday.
“A military council has been set up headed by his son, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno,” the army’s spokesman, General Azem Bermandoa Agouna, said on state radio, shortly after the announcement that the newly re-elected president had died of wounds while fighting rebels in the north of Chad.
