Chad’s President Dies After Battle With Rebels, Military Says

Idriss Déby, the armed service commander who ruled the oil-making desert nation of Chad with an iron fist for a few decades, died just after sustaining accidents in clashes between rebels and governing administration troops outside the funds.

It was a shocking enhancement for a region plagued by instability and rising jihadist violence.

Gen. Azem Bermandoa Agouma, a armed service spokesman, browse a assertion on state television stating that Mr. Déby died from accidents in a weekend struggle with rebels advancing on N’Djamena from the Libyan border. Parliament was dissolved and Mr. Déby’s son, Mahamat Kaka, took about as interim president right until new elections can be held, Gen Agouma reported.

Two western diplomats and a rebel spokesman verified that Mr. Deby was wounded in the desert region of Kanem on Monday then flown a hundred thirty miles to an N’Djamena healthcare facility the place he died of his accidents. But they reported queries remained about the conditions, like how he was killed and why he was so close to the front line. Chad’s governing administration has switched off the online, imposed a 6 p.m. curfew and shut the country’s exterior borders.

News of the sixty eight-year aged president’s death plunges the strategic West African Sahel region into contemporary uncertainty at a second the place community armies—backed by U.S. and European forces—have struggled to check the rapid rise of jihadist and militant teams. On Monday, Mr. Déby was declared the winner of an April 11 presidential election with 79% of a vote that the opposition decried as rigged, his sixth successive victory since seizing energy in a 1990 coup.