Chad’s newly elected President and junta leader Mahamat Idriss Deby raises his hand during his inauguration ceremony in N’djamena, Chad May 23, 2024
N’Djamena, January 9 — At least 19 people have been killed in Chad where security forces said they had prevented an attempt by armed fighters to storm the presidential complex in the capital N’Djamena.
At least 18 of a force of 24 armed men were killed in the failed assault on the president’s office on Wednesday evening, the government said, and one member of the security forces also died in the gun battles.
“There were 18 dead and six injured” among the attackers “and we suffered one death and three injured, one of them seriously”, Chad’s foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said.
Hours after the shooting, Koulamallah appeared in a video, surrounded by soldiers and with a gun on his belt, saying, “The situation is completely under control … the destabilisation attempt was put down, everything is calm”.
Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah seen in a video apparently recorded at the presidential palace in N’Djamena
The attack coincided with an official visit by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Chad.
Hours before the shooting erupted, Wang Yi had met with Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby and other senior officials. Deby was in the presidential complex at the time of the attack, according to Koulamallah.
Deby seized power after rebels killed his father, longstanding President Idriss Deby, in 2021. The older Deby had ruled Chad since a coup in the early 1990s.
A security source told the French news agency AFP that the attackers were members of the Boko Haram armed group, but Koulamallah later said they were “probably not” rebels, describing them instead as drunken “Pieds Nickeles” – a reference to a French comic featuring hapless crooks.
A security source also told the Reuters news agency that the incident was likely an “attempted terrorist attack”.
“Individuals in three vehicles attacked the military camps around the president’s office, but the army neutralised them,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Residents in the area described hearing loud volleys of gunfire.
The attack comes less than two weeks after Chad held a contested general election that the government hailed as a key step towards ending military rule, but that was marked by low turnout and opposition allegations of fraud.
A call by the opposition for voters to boycott the polls left the field open for candidates aligned with the president.
The former French colony, which is rich in oil resources but one of the poorest countries in Africa, hosted France’s last military bases in the region known as the Sahel, but at the end of November, ended defence and security agreements with Paris, calling them “obsolete”.
About 1,000 French military personnel were stationed in the country and are in the process of being withdrawn. Their departure follows after France was driven out of three Sahelian countries governed by military governments hostile to Paris: Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Senegal and Ivory Coast have also asked France to vacate military bases on their territory.
