Chadian President Idriss Deby Dies In Clashes With Rebels

Deby, who just won re-election as president of Chad, is dead after fighting with rebel forces, military spokesperson Azem Bermandoa Agouna said.

Chadian President Idriss Deby / Photo credit: Reuters

Chad’s President Idriss Deby, who got recently re-elected for his sixth term, got injured during clashes with rebels and died in a hospital, a source familiar with a matter told Sputnik on Tuesday.

The AFP reported earlier in the day that Deby, who commanded an army unit during hostilities against the rebels in Chad’s north, died.

The military spokesman, Azem Bermandoa Agouna, said that the president died while protecting the country’s territorial integrity, according to the news agency.

The source told Sputnik that Deby was critically injured during the clashes and died later in the hospital.

The source added that the president arrived at the front line in the north to celebrate the military victories against the rebels and lead the operations of the armed forces.

Deby, who just won re-election as president of Chad, is dead after fighting with rebel forces, military spokesperson Azem Bermandoa Agouna said.

Déby, who has ruled Chad for 30 years, was re-elected for a sixth term with 79.32 per cent of the vote, according to official results released Monday shortly after the army said it had defeated a rebellion launched on election day April 11 and killed “more than 300 enemies.

Marshal Déby’s re-election was widely anticipated by Chadians who voted without enthusiasm on April 11, according to AFP journalists in N’Djamena.

The incumbent was opposed by six candidates with no political weight who were accused of being mere “stooges”, as the government had dismissed, legally or through violence and intimidation, the leaders of a divided opposition.

Immediately after the results were announced, large numbers of activists from Déby’s party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), were singing and dancing in the central Place de la Nation in N’Djamena.

Sporadic automatic gunfire rang out as Déby’s supporters celebrated victory as they had in each of the previous five elections since he took power by force of arms in 1990.

“We are celebrating a beautiful victory in the first round, but we also have a very strong thought for our brothers, our comrades, soldiers of the Chadian army who fell on the field of honor to defend peace, democracy and the continuity of the institutions of the state,” said the secretary-general of the MPS, Mahamat Zen Bada.

The Chadian army claimed on Monday to have killed more than 300 rebels who have been making an incursion into the north of the country for the past eight days, and to have taken 150 prisoners and lost five soldiers in the fighting, while the government assured that the situation is under control.

(NAN)

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