Angry protesters in Chad tried to storm a French military base over the fatal shooting of a local soldier.
The soldier had reportedly gone to the Faya-Largeau base in the north of the country seeking medical treatment on Tuesday, 05 September.
The French troops are deployed there as part of anti-terror operations in the region. France has had the garrison at Faya-Largeau for 40 years. Its present contingent consists 40 soldiers.
According to Chadian and French officials, the soldier then attacked a nurse with a scalpel.
“A Chadian soldier who was not in a normal state went to the French army base to get bandaged, picked up a scalpel and wounded a French military nurse,” General Ali Maide Kebir, the region’s governor, told the AFP news agency.
“The nurse used his firearm and killed him,” he said.
A senior officer with French forces told AFP that the military nurse reacted in self-defense.
“We don’t know the reasons for the attack. The nurse received three scalpel blows to the throat, head, and neck but his condition has stabilised,” he said.
The Chadian and French militaries have launched joint investigations into the incident.
Wave of French discontent in West Africa
“After hearing of the soldier’s death, the people of Faya demonstrated all day long outside the entrance to the base and tried unsuccessfully to get inside,” Maide Kebir said.
“The crowd dispersed at nightfall,” he said, describing the attack on the nurse as an “isolated incident.”
France is struggling with a wave of discontent among its former African colonies, where coups in Mali and Burkina Faso have prompted it to pull its forces out of those countries.
It is also under pressure to quit Niger, whose pro-French elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, was toppled in July.
