Chad’s president Déby killed on the frontline

President Idriss Déby Itno, the strongman leader of Chad and one of the west’s staunchest allies in the battle against jihadism in the Sahel, has been killed while visiting troops on the frontline, an army spokesman said.

The president sustained injuries while commanding troops fighting a rebel incursion heading for the capital N’Djamena, the spokesman said on state television.

The news came just hours after provisional results showed that Déby, one of Africa’s longest-serving rulers, had extended his 30 years in power by winning a sixth term in elections earlier this month. His death will have great implications not just for the impoverished yet oil-rich central African country, but across the region, where Chad is central to the fight against both Boko Haram and the jihadist groups that operate across the Sahel.

“Idriss Déby Itno has just taken his last breath in defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield,” General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said on state TV, flanked by fellow soldiers.

The circumstances of Déby’s death were not yet known, nor was it clear why the president would have been close enough to ongoing battle to have been struck and killed. The army said that Déby’s son General Mahamat Kaka had been named interim head of state.

Chad’s highly capable military and its central location has made it an important ally of western powers fighting extremism in Africa, and insulated Déby from criticism of gross human rights abuses and democratic degradation. The US counted Déby as among its most important allies against the 11-year-old Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin region where Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad meet.

For France, the ties are even closer. Paris maintains great influence in all of its former colonies, and is leading the fight against extremism that has killed thousands and displaced millions across the Sahel. France’s 5,000-troop-strong counter-terrorism force in the Sahel, Operation Barkhane, is based in N’Djamena.

Déby’s grip on power has been threatened in recent weeks by a pair of rebel convoys racing south through the Sahara Desert towards N’Djamena. Some rebels crossed the border from Libya on election day. The Chadian army, among the strongest in all of Africa, was thought to have beat the rebels back.

Déby’s campaign had said on Monday that he had postponed his victory speech and instead travelled to the frontline to lead his troops in battle against the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) rebels, who the government calls “terrorists” and who operate from neighbouring Libya.

Two years ago, Paris diverted Mirage fighter jets from Operation Barkhane to strike a similar column of 40 pick-up trucks carrying armed rebels who operate from neighbouring Libya, drawing criticism that they were intervening in internal affairs to protect Déby.