Chad's President Idriss Deby Itno killed in 'clashes with rebel fighters'

The President of Chad died on Tuesday of wounds he sustained on the frontline fighting rebels in the north of the country, the army said, plunging into chaos a key Western ally in the fight against Islamist militants in Africa.

“Idriss Déby Itno breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield”, an army general told state TV.

Mr Déby, a strongman who ruled the troubled central African nation with his fearsome military and wily political manoeuvring for three decades, had just secured another six years in office in a controversial election when he was killed.

The circumstances of his death are murky. Over the weekend, the president visited troops battling rebels based across the border in Libya.

The rebels belong to a group called the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT). A convoy of rebels tried to advance towards the southern capital, N’Djamena over the weekend but was reportedly beaten back by the Chadian military.

Mr Deby had reportedly gone to the frontline to inspire his troops to fight when he was caught in a rebel manoeuvre, according to journalists at JeuneAfrique magazine. This would match past behaviour. A year ago, the president led 'Operation Boma's Wrath' on Lake Chad against Boko Haram fighters.

"Anyone who follows Deby knows he used to say "to lead troops you have to smell the gunpowder," said Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Africa Center.

It is unclear whether Mr Déby was killed by rebels as the army claimed. Details surrounding the death of the 68-year-old remain largely unverified.

Either way, the news will come as a thunderbolt to officials in Paris and Washington DC.

The strongman was a cornerstone of France’s post-colonial influence in Francophone Africa, and his military has played a crucial role in the West’s fight against jihadism in the region.

The Chadian army announced that the parliament had been disbanded. A military council headed by one of his sons Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, a 37-year-old four-star general and commander of the presidential guard, will take charge for the next 18 months.

The Chadian constitution says that in the event of the president's death, the head of the National Assembly will exercise his powers provisionally. This means a constitutional coup has taken place.

Mr Déby was a career soldier and a canny survivor — a giant of African politics going back four decades and one of the continent’s longest-serving presidents.

When Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi sent tanks into northern Chad in the late 1980s to create a “Greater Islamic State of the Sahel”, Mr Déby led Toyota pickup trucks packed with fighters across the Sahara to drive out of the country.

Mr Déby came to power in 1990 after leading a rebellion against the former Chadian dictator and convicted war criminal Hissène Habré. Since then, he has made a habit of survival against all the odd in various rebellions and coup attempts.

He used polygamous marriages to cement his control over key industries in Chad and fill the ranks of top government and military positions with children, relatives and allies. A small trickle of oil from fields in South Chad allowed Mr Déby to bring opponents onside through patronage and fund his powerful military.

This military and Mr Déby’s willingness to use it in the ‘War on Terror’ won him much favour in the West over the last two decades. In February 2019, French Mirage 2000 fighter jets strafed a convoy of rebels advancing on the capital at N'Djamena's request for three days.

Chad sent thousands of soldiers to drive jihadis allied with Al Qaeda out of northern Mali in 2013 and has inflicted huge losses against Boko Haram jihadists around Lake Chad. More recently, a thousand crack Chadian troops were sent to the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to fight Islamist militants there.

Now the nation of 16m, split into more than 200 ethnic groups, has been thrown into uncertainty. To the north of the country lies Libya’s civil war. To the east lies Darfur. To the south is the Central African Republic and to the West is Lake Chad, where Boko Haram and Islamic State jihadists wage a horrific war on civilians.

In the wake of Mr Déby's death, the US Embassy in N'djamena has said US government employees were sheltering 'in place' and that US citizens able to leave the country should do so. The British government urged all UK citizens to leave a few days ago.

FACT was founded in 2016 by former Chadian army officers angry at Mr Déby's rule. They based themselves in the Tibesti mountains in lawless southern Libya.