Chadian President dies fighting rebels hours after winning a sixth term

The president of Chad, Idriss Deby, who ruled over the central African nation for more than three decades,  has been killed while fighting rebels on the front line just hours after winning a sixth term.

The army said Deby had been commanding his army at the weekend as it battled against rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on election day. Deby has been known to lead the army from the front in the fight against rebels.

Deby had ruled Chad with an iron fist since 1990 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, reports the AFP.

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.

Deby would have been one of the longest-serving leaders in the world, after provisional results showed him winning the April 11 election.

He was a herder’s son from the Zaghawa ethnic group who took the classic path to power through the army, and relished the military culture.

His latest election victory – with almost 80 percent of the vote – had never been in doubt, with a divided opposition, boycott calls, and a campaign in which demonstrations were banned or dispersed.

Deby had campaigned on a promise of bringing peace and security to the region, but his pledges were undermined by the rebel incursion.

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The government had sought Monday to assure concerned residents that the offensive was over.

There had been panic in some areas of N’Djamena on Monday after tanks were deployed along the city’s main roads, an AFP journalist reported.

The tanks were later withdrawn apart from a perimeter around the president’s office, which is under heavy security during normal times.

‘The establishment of a security deployment in certain areas of the capital seems to have been misunderstood,’ government spokesman Cherif Mahamat Zene had said on Twitter on Monday.

‘There is no particular threat to fear.’

However, the US embassy in N’Djamena had on Saturday ordered non-essential personnel to leave the country, warning of possible violence in the capital. Britain also urged its nationals to leave.AFP