The assault got here simply hours after China’s Overseas Minister Wang Yi met with authorities officers within the capital N’Djamena
A minimum of 19 individuals have been killed in Chad the place safety forces mentioned they’d prevented an try by armed fighters to storm the presidential complex within the capital N’Djamena.
A minimum of 18 of a drive of 24 armed males had been killed within the failed assault on the president’s workplace on Wednesday night, the federal government mentioned, and one member of the safety forces additionally died within the gun battles.
“There have been 18 useless and 6 injured” among the many attackers “and we suffered one loss of life and three injured, one in every of them significantly”, Chad’s overseas minister and authorities spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah mentioned.
Hours after the capturing, Koulamallah appeared in a video, surrounded by troopers and with a gun on his belt, saying, “The state of affairs is totally underneath management … the destabilisation try was put down.”
The assault coincided with an official go to by China’s Overseas Minister Wang Yi to Chad.
Hours earlier than the capturing erupted, Wang Yi had met with Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby and different senior officers. Deby was within the presidential advanced on the time of the assault, in keeping with Koulamallah.
Deby seized energy after rebels killed his father, longstanding President Idriss Deby, in 2021. The older Deby had dominated Chad since a coup within the early Nineties.
A safety supply informed the French information company AFP that the attackers had been members of the Boko Haram armed group, however Koulamallah later mentioned they had been “in all probability not” rebels, describing them as a substitute as drunken “Pieds Nickeles” – a reference to a French comedian that includes hapless crooks.
A safety supply additionally informed the Reuters information company that the incident was seemingly an “tried terrorist assault”.
“People in three automobiles attacked the army camps across the president’s workplace, however the military neutralised them,” the supply mentioned, talking on situation of anonymity.
Residents within the space described listening to loud volleys of gunfire.
The assault comes lower than two weeks after Chad held a contested basic election that the federal government hailed as a key step in the direction of ending army rule, however that was marked by low turnout and opposition allegations of fraud.
A name by the opposition for voters to boycott the polls left the sector open for candidates aligned with the president.
The previous French colony, which is wealthy in oil assets however one of many poorest international locations in Africa, hosted France’s last military bases within the area often known as the Sahel, however on the finish of November, ended defence and safety agreements with Paris, calling them “out of date”.
About 1,000 French army personnel had been stationed within the nation and are within the means of being withdrawn. Their departure follows after France was pushed out of three Sahelian international locations ruled by army governments hostile to Paris: Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Senegal and Ivory Coast have additionally requested France to vacate army bases on their territory.
