The Chadian army said on Monday it had killed 300 rebels who waged a major incursion into the north of the country eight days ago, adding that it had lost five of its soldiers.
A heavily armed rebel group launched a raid from its rear base in Libya on April 11, the same day as Chad’s presidential election that is expected to see the incumbent Idriss Deby Itno poised to extend his 30-year rule.
The raid by the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) saw “more than 300 rebels neutralised” and claimed the lives of “five martyrs” or government troops, army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna told AFP on Monday.
Bermandoa said 36 soldiers had been wounded in Saturday’s fighting and 150 rebels taken prisoner, including three senior officials.
The government has said that the rebel offensive in the provinces of Tibesti and Kanem was over.
Deby, who seized power in 1990 as the head of an armed rebellion, is a staunch ally of France and the United States in the fight against armed groups in the arid Sahel region.One of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, Deby has successfully put down a string of rebellions since taking power, sometimes with military assistance from France.
Chad’s longtime President Idriss Deby has died of wounds suffered on the frontline in the country’s north, where he had gone to visit soldiers battling rebels, the armed forces said.
Deby, 68, “has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield” over the weekend, army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television on Tuesday, a day after Deby was declared the winner of a presidential election.
The exact circumstances of Deby’s death were not immediately clear. The army said the president 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 on April 11.
Agouna also said a military council led by the late president’s 37-year-old son, four-star General Mahamat Idriss Deby, would replace him. A curfew has been imposed and the country’s borders have been shut in the wake of the president’s death.
“It is worth noting that in case anything happens to the president, it is not a military council that should be leading the country – the speaker of the legislative assembly should be leading for 40 days until a transition or elections are held,” said Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from the capital, N’Djamena.
“[But] the military announced that the legislative assembly has been dissolved and that the constitution also has been dissolved, so what they are doing is that they replaced the constitution with their own set of rules.”
The shock announcement came a day after Deby, who came to power in a rebellion in 1990, won a sixth term. Provisional results released on Monday showed that Deby had taken 79.3 percent of the vote.
Deby postponed his victory speech to supporters and instead went to visit Chadian soldiers battling rebels, according to his campaign manager.
The rebel group Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), which is based across the northern frontier with Libya, attacked a border post in the provinces of Tibesti and Kanem on election day and then advanced hundreds of kilometres south.But it suffered a setback over the weekend.
Agouna had told Reuters news agency that army troops killed more than 300 fighters and captured 150 on Saturday in Kanem province, around 300km(185 miles) from N’Djamena. Five government soldiers were killed and 36 were wounded, he said.
FACT said in a statement on Sunday that it had “liberated” the Kanem region. Such claims in remote desert combat zones are difficult to verify.
Relished the military culture
Deby was a herder’s son from the Zaghawa ethnic group.
His latest election victory 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.The government had sought on 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 on Saturday had ordered non-essential personnel to leave the country, warning of possible violence in the capital. Britain also urged its nationals to leave.
France’s embassy said in an advisory to its nationals in Chad that the deployment was a precaution and there was no specific threat to the capital.
The Tibesti mountains near the Libyan frontier frequently see fighting between rebels and the army, as well as in the northeast bordering Sudan. France carried out air raids in February 2019 to stop an incursion there.
In February 2008, a rebel assault reached the gates of the presidential palace before being pushed back with French backing.
