Breaking: Chadian president Idriss Deby is Dead

The president of Chad has been killed during a fight with rebels on the front line just hours after winning a sixth term. 

Idriss Deby, who ruled over the central African nation for more than three decades, ‘breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield,’ an army spokesman said today.  

The army said Deby had been commanding his army at the weekend as it battled against rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on election day. 

Deby had ruled Chad with an iron fist since 1990 but was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the troubled Sahel region.