The president of Chad, Idriss Déby, died on Tuesday during a visit to his soldiers on the battlefront, according to the army in a statement.
Déby, who had been in power for 30 years, had won his sixth term on Monday with 79.3% of the vote. The president has died during a visit to the troops fighting the rebels in the north of the country, as reported by The Africa Report citing his campaign manager, Mahamat Zen Bada.
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The cause of death is unclear. “President Idriss Déby Itno has just breathed his last. It is with deep bitterness that we announced this morning the death of the Chadian Chadian,” the Army announced.
More than 300 rebels from the Front for Alternation and Concord in Chad (FACT, for its acronym in French) were killed this Monday by the Chadian Army in clashes in the province of Kanem (west), according to military sources informed Efe.
“I would like to assure you that the fighting is over. We have defeated the mercenaries. Our forces have killed more than 300 of their fighters and taken more than 150 prisoners,” he told Chadian Army spokesman Azem Bermandoa Agouna.
In the fighting, five soldiers died and 36 were wounded, Agouna said, indicating that “a score of vehicles equipped with heavy weapons have been recovered from the hands of the rebels, who fled to Niger.”
The FACT denied the official version of the Army and denied having lost 300 men. “We are in the province of Kanem. The fighting was certainly hard, but the damage is enormous on both sides. We have not lost 300 soldiers,” the political coordinator and communication officer of the FACT, Kingabé Ogouzeimi of Tapol, told Efe.
