Déby had ruled for 30 years and won a sixth term in elections last week
Idriss Déby, the veteran president of Chad, has died, national radio in the central African state has said.
A statement from the military said the 68-year-old ruler, in power for 30 years, had been killed “on the battlefield” after being injured fighting rebels but gave no further details.
Déby last week won a sixth term in presidential elections. The poll prompted an invasion by a Libya-based rebel group called the Force for Change and Concord in Chad (Fact), which military officials had said was repulsed at the weekend.
Officials had said the veteran politician would not give a victory speech after the polls because he had travelled to the frontlines to take charge of military operations.
“He died as he lived, as a free man, with a weapon in his hand,” Abderrahman Koulamallah, a former rebel and presidential adviser, told French radio network RFI.
Reports from N’Djamena, the capital, suggested that in the wake of Déby’s death, parliament has been dissolved and the government replaced by a transitional military council led by Déby’s 37-year-old son Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, a general.
In a statement on national TV, a spokesperson, Azem Bermendao Agouna, issued a call to “to dialogue and peace … to all Chadians in the country and abroad in order to continue to build Chad together”.
“The national council of transition reassures the Chadian people that all measures have been taken to guarantee peace, security and the republican order,” he said, surrounded by officers.
N’Djamena remained calm but shops were being shuttered at the central Sog Galla market “in anticipation of chaos”, one resident told the Guardian.
Déby took control of the strategically located country in an armed rebellion in 1990. He was one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders and a close ally of western powers battling Islamist militants in west and central Africa.
But he has faced repeated insurgencies in the desert north and was also dealing with rising public discontent over his management of oil wealth and crackdowns on opponents.
Last Sunday, the rebels said they had captured garrisons near Chad’s northern borders with Niger and Libya “without resistance”.
Fact is based in Libya, where it has a non-aggression pact with Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman who controls much of the country’s east. Mainly made up of the Saharan Goran people, it has clashed regularly with the Chadian army.
The Tibesti mountains near the Libyan frontier frequently see fighting between rebels and the army. French air strikes were needed to stop an incursion there in early 2019.
In February 2008, a rebel assault reached the gates of the presidential palace before being pushed back with French backing.
The unrest has raised alarm bells among western countries, which saw Déby as an important ally in the fight against Islamist extremist groups, including Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin and groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State in the Sahel.
His death will underline the growing instability of the Sahel region, where a complex combination of economic, social, political and environmental factors is fuelling a series of crises.
However the family succession and continuing presence of the military at the heart of power may reassure nervous allies such as France and the US, observers said.
France had based its extensive Sahel counter-terrorism operations in N’Djamena. Chad, a former French colony, had announced in February the deployment of 1,200 troops to complement 5,100 French soldiers in the area.
this was yesterday. Aged like milk
