Chad’s newly re-elected President Idriss Deby has died of injuries suffered on the frontline while fighting rebels in the north of the Sahel country, an army spokesman said on Tuesday. But there are conflicting reports on what actually led to his demise with some political commentators saying it was an inside job.

Deby, 68, “has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield” over the weekend, army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television.

The news came a day after Deby won a sixth term, as per provisional election results released on Monday. Deby, who came to power in a rebellion in 1990, took 79.3 percent of the vote in the April 11 presidential election, the results showed.

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