Chad president dies of wound suffered on front line

KABUL (Pajhwok): Chad’s President Idriss Deby has succumbed to wounds suffered on the front line in the country’s north, Al Jazeera reports.

A Chad army spokesman said late on Tuesday: “Deby, 68, has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield.” Gen. Azem Bermandoa Agouna made the announcement on state-run television a day after Deby was declared the winner of the latest presidential vote.

Deby was commanding his army at the weekend as it battled insurgents who had launched a major incursion into Chad’s north on election day on April 11.

A military council headed by the late president’s son, Gen. Mahamat Idriss Deby, is poised to succeed him.

A curfew has been clamped and the country’s borders have been closed as a result of the president’s death.

Heads of state and government of friendly countries are expected to attend a state funeral for Deby in N’Djamena on Friday.

Deby will be laid to rest in his home region in the country’s far east.

The militant outfit Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) attacked a border post in the provinces of Tibesti and Kanem on election day.

Pan monitor/mud