A man was shot dead Monday after voting in Chad’s presidential election by an attacker who did not have an electoral card and had been barred from voting, electoral officials told AFP.
The unknown gunman opened fire indiscriminately, hitting a 65-year-old who had just cast his ballot in Moundou, said Ousmane Houzibe, head of the ANGE electoral body in the southern city.
The shooter was among a group of people demanding the right to vote in the election, in which junta leader and transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno’s main rival is Prime Minister Succes Masra.
The circumstances of the incident were confirmed over the telephone to AFP by Moundou mayor Bienvenu Guelmbaye.
Houzibe, who described it as an isolated incident, said calm had returned but that the attackers had fled.
An official from Moundou prosecutor’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the assailants were being interviewed, while the mayor spoke of four arrests.
“Unidentified individuals burst into the voting station at Bellevue school, wanted to vote but not having voter cards, insisted,” Houzibe said.
“In the altercation, an unidentified individual drew his weapon and fired, the bullet hit a voter aged 65, who had just voted and who was leaving.
“He died on the spot,” Houzibe said, adding the aggressor wanted to “intimidate members of the polling station”.