Idriss Deby has died

Chad’s long time President Idriss Deby has died of wounds suffered on the front line in the country’s north, where he had gone to visit soldiers battling rebels, the armed forces said. Deby died just over a day after he was declared the winner of a presidential election. The army said the President had been commanding his army at the weekend as it battled rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on Election Day on April 11. A military council led by the late President’s 37-year-old son, four-star General Mahamat Idriss Deby, would replace him. A curfew has been imposed and the country’s borders have been shut in the wake of the President’s death.• Dr Charles Sinkala is Africa 55 States President and Organisation of African Political Parties • Prof Douglas Yates, American Graduate School Paris of African studies