Our Correspondent
Chad’s President Idriss Déby was reported killed following injuries sustained in clashes with rebels in the north of the country at the weekend; the army has said.
The announcement came a day after provisional election results projected he would win a sixth term in office.
The government and parliament have been dissolved.
A curfew has also been imposed and the borders have been shut.
Mr Déby, 68, spent more than three decades in power and was one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.
An army officer by training, he came to power in 1990 through an armed uprising.
He was a long-time ally of France; and other Western powers in the battle against jihadist groups in the Sahel region of Africa.
Mr Déby “breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield”; an army general said on state TV on Tuesday.
He had gone to the front line, several hundred kilometres north of the capital N’Djamena; at the weekend to visit troops battling rebels belonging to a group calling itself Fact (the Front for Change and Concord in Chad).
A military council led by Mr. Deby’s son, a 37-year-old four star general; will govern for the next 18 months.
Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno will lead the council but “free and democratic” elections will be held once the transition period is over; the army said in its statement.
Ahead of the election on 11 April, Mr Déby campaigned on a platform of bringing peace; and security to the region.
But there has been growing unhappiness over his government’s management of Chad’s oil resources.
