Chad’s military ruler Mahamat Idriss Deby on Friday visited a hospital and a protest-hit district of N’Djamena, his office said, after a day of unprecedented violence that left around fifty people dead in the capital and elsewhere.
Tensions eased on Friday after Chad’s ruling junta announced an overnight curfew on Thursday, following fatal clashes earlier in the day between police and demonstrators protesting the military’s grip on power.
The violence came on the heels of a national forum organized by Deby that extended his military government’s grip on power beyond Thursday’s deadline.
Deby, a 38-year-old five-star general, has been in power since his father — longtime military president Idriss Deby Itno — was killed in an operation against rebels in April 2021. He took no journalists with him on his city tour on Friday.
Escorted by a dozen vehicles, Mahamat Deby visited the capital’s southern seventh district, where there were violent clashes on Thursday, according to photos posted on the presidential palace’s Facebook page.
Some photos showed him at the hospital bedside of people hurt in the clashes.
Prime Minister Saleh Kebzabo put the official toll from the violence at around fifty dead and more than three hundred injured. He said most fatalities had occurred in N’Djamena and the cities of Moundou and Koumra.
Kebzabo also announced the suspension of “all public activity” by major opposition groups, including the Transformers party and civil society coalition Wakit Tamma.
In southern districts of the capital, where most of the clashes took place, there was relative calm on Friday morning, although debris from burnt tyres and the remains of makeshift street barricades littered the streets.
Law enforcement officers, some of them hooded, were seen sitting in vehicles to deter further protests.
Killing our people
In the southern Chagoua district of the capital, women wearing high-viz jackets and carrying brooms and pickaxes cleaned the streets, while bus services gradually resumed.
Local resident Suzanne Chamnone, 50, who lives next to the headquarters of Kebzabo’s party, the National Union for Development and Renewal (UNDR), said she saw people gathered outside the party building on Thursday.
“They threw stones and set fire to the premises,” she said. “I went home out of fear, with my children.”
The violence came on the heels of a national forum organized by Deby that extended his stay in power.
Deby took over in April 2021 after his iron-fisted father, in power for three decades, was killed during an operation against rebels.
The younger Deby has since angered many at home and embarrassed backers abroad by staying in power beyond his initially promised deadline, which would have expired on Thursday.
“They’re firing on us. They are killing our people,” Succes Masra, whose Transformers party was among groups that had called the protest, said on Twitter on Thursday.
The United Nations said it “deplored the lethal use of force” and called for an investigation into reports of human rights violations.
The African Union and the European Union have also condemned the repression of the protests.
“This was a declaration of war against our party. A group of about one hundred people came with tyres and petrol. We were in the minority,” argued UNDR activist Nestor Nahor, 40, who witnessed the looting at the party HQ.
Access to the internet was disrupted in the south of the city on Friday.
Deby’s junta had originally declared it would restore civilian rule after 18 months in power and he initially promised not to take part in elections that would follow.
But as the 18-month deadline neared, the nationwide forum staged by Deby reset the clock. On October 1, it approved a new 24-month timeframe for holding elections.
It named Deby “transitional president” and declared he could be a candidate in the poll.
