Chad’s long time President Idriss Deby has died of wounds after visiting soldiers fighting so called rebels on the frontline. Army spokesman, General Azem Bermandoa Agouna, said that Deby “has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield” at the weekend.

68-year-old Deby died a day after having been declared the winner of a presidential election. Provisional results released on Monday showed that Deby had taken 79.3 percent of the vote. He had won a sixth term.

The BBC reports that while the exact circumstances of Deby’s death were not immediately clear, Chads military said the president had been commanding his army at the weekend in battle against rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country April 11, which was election day.

A military council, the head of which is the late president’s 37-year-old son, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, is to replace Deby. This is despite the fact that the speaker of the legislative assembly should be leading for 40 days, until a transition or elections are held. However, in an irregular process, the military announced that the legislative assembly as well as the constitution had been dissolved.

Meanwhile, a curfew has been imposed on the country following Deby’s demise,  according to the BBC, and the country’s borders have been shut.

Umm Muhammed Umar