Rebels who launched an offensive in northern Chad, sparking clashes that claimed the life of veteran president Idriss Deby Itno, are in flight, the country’s new defence minister said on Thursday.

“The security forces are thoroughly sweeping the operational area. Most of the prisoners are in the hands of the gendarmerie (police) and are being well-treated. The enemy is fleeing,” Defence Minister Brahim Daoud Yaya told a news conference.

“We are never going to dialogue with terrorists.”

He was speaking after the first meeting of a transitional government appointed by a 14-member military junta, the Transitional Military Council (TMC), that took office after Deby’s death on April 19.

Opposition supporters, meanwhile, called for fresh anti-junta protests on Saturday.

Demonstrations on April 29 that were violently repressed by the authorities claimed six lives, according to the authorities, and nine according to a local grass-roots organisation, while more than 600 people were arrested.

The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), a large armed group with a rear base in Libya, mounted an offensive on April 11 as the country was to hold presidential elections.

Deby, a former general who had been in power for 30 years, led the fighting against the insurgents.

According to the authorities, he died from combat injuries in the Kanem desert region, about 300 kilometres (200 miles) north of the capital N’Djamena, close to the border with Niger.

“Libya is the terrorists’ stronghold,” the minister said.

He added, however: “I cannot accuse Libya of supporting the terrorists, as there is no state in Libya.”

Deby’s death occurred on the same day that he was declared victor in the presidential results and that the army claimed to have killed 300 FACT rebels, according to official announcements.

Another 246 rebels have been captured and handed over to the judicial authorities, according to the authorities.

Fighting has been continuing in the area of Nokou, in the administrative region of North Kanem.

Last week, a Chadian military helicopter crashed there after what the army said was a breakdown, while FACT said it had downed the aircraft.

A junta took power immediately after Deby’s shock death, headed by his 37-year-old son Mahamat, a four-star general, and parliament was suspended.

The military rulers have vowed to hold “free and democratic” elections following an 18-month transition period.

On Sunday, the junta unveiled a 40-member transitional government, the key posts of which have gone to members of the former president’s MPS party.

According to a report on Thursday’s first ministerial meeting, a copy of which was seen by AFP, Deby “instructed the government to urgently strengthen communal living, which has been seriously tested, to consolidate peace, ensure security and guarantee security.”

He also called for the holding of an “inclusive national dialogue.”

One of Africa’s longest-surviving rebel groups, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has terrorised parts of central Africa for 35 years.

Its leaders are violent pariahs and fugitives from international justice, who were once hunted by US special forces and African armies.

Founder Joseph Kony remains on the run but other key commanders have died or turned themselves in, among them Dominic Ongwen who was sentenced to 25 years in jail on Thursday for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

• The LRA and Museveni –

The LRA began as a rebellion against the takeover of Uganda by rebel leader Yoweri Museveni in 1986. This followed in a tradition of armed movements led by spiritual leaders among the northern Acholi people.

Kony, a Catholic altar boy, showed an early penchant for mystical pronouncements and horrific brutality.

He claimed he would liberate Uganda from Museveni and establish a state ruled according to his own version of the 10 commandments.

He later added an 11th, banning the riding of bicycles with offenders punished with amputation.

When the Acholi failed to embrace his rebellion Kony turned on them, attacking civilians, abducting women and children and massacring entire villages.

The LRA became notorious for its abductions, with tens of thousands kidnapped over the years.

• The LRA and the ICC –

In 2005 the ICC unsealed arrest warrants against five top LRA leaders, including Kony and Ongwen, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The pressure of ICC attention contributed to Kony’s turning up to peace talks the following year, the first time he had appeared in public in years. However, the talks collapsed and Kony took his rebels back to the bush.

Three of the five ICC indictees have since died. Ongwen surrendered in January 2015.

The 2005 warrants were the first issued by the court and came after Uganda asked the ICC to investigate the LRA case. In 2016, Ongwen’s trial became the first involving the LRA.

• The LRA and the US –

A concerted campaign by activists in the US led former president Barack Obama to sign a law in 2010 that allowed the deployment of around 100 special forces to work with regional armies to hunt down Kony.

One of the groups, Invisible Children, went on to produce a video two years later called “Kony 2012” that went viral with 100 million views in a matter of days, raising awareness of the rebel group’s activities and its fugitive leader.

The video’s unexpected success — and the vocal criticism that it also triggered — resulted in the very public, naked, ranting breakdown of the group’s founder and frontman Jason Russell.

That, plus the failure of their hashtags to stop Kony, meant the American clicktivists largely lost interest while Kony and the LRA continued their depredations.

In 2017, the US military announced it was wrapping up the mission against the LRA, saying its operations had “been reduced to irrelevance”.

The same year the Ugandan army began withdrawing its troops from the Central African Republic.

• The LRA today –

The rebels are not what they were. Estimated to number in the low hundreds, LRA groups are dispersed across parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Sudan.

The US and the African Union have both designated the LRA as a terrorist group and the US has labelled Kony a “global terrorist” yet the LRA threat is relatively limited and local.

The LRA Crisis Tracker organisation says the group carried out 42 attacks in the past year, leaving 31 dead and 192 abducted, mainly in the remote DRC-CAR-South Sudan border areas.

This represents a 48 percent decline in attacks compared to the previous year.

Kony’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Ethiopia’s parliament on Thursday designated the former ruling party of Tigray a terrorist organisation, a move critics fear could stoke persecution and frustrate efforts to assist those in the war-hit region.

The resolution, passed overwhelmingly in a parliament dominated by the ruling party, also applied the terrorist designation to the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), an armed group active in other parts of the country.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has scheduled elections for June 5 despite the grinding conflict in Tigray and brutal ethnic violence in other parts of the country, which the OLA is accused of being involved in.

The terror designations were approved by Abiy’s Council of Ministers over the weekend, and deal a blow to the prospect of peace talks with the TPLF six months after the army entered Tigray to disarm and detain its leaders.

Attorney-General Gedion Timothewos said ordinary civilians would not be affected by the terror listings, and warned external actors against collaborating with the groups in question.

The US-based Tigray Center for Information and Communication said the designation would lead to “mass arrests” and provide cover for greater persecution of the minority group.

“This step was taken to provide prevalent ethnic profiling of Tigrayans and the criminalization of advocacy regarding the war on Tigray with a legal veneer,” the group said in a statement.

Abiy, a Nobel Peace laureate, has come under pressure over the conflict in Tigray, with the international community warning of a growing humanitarian disaster in the northern region.

The UN relief agency OCHA said aid provision in Tigray was based on needs, and “engagement with parties –– regardless of their national designation –– is intended strictly for humanitarian purposes”.

“We expect that the humanitarian exceptions are upheld and respected, and that the protections necessary to deliver humanitarian aid and assistance are extended to all humanitarian actors,” OCHA said in a statement to AFP.

The OLA, meanwhile, has been accused by the government of massacring civilians in the Oromia and Ahmara regions — allegations the group has denied.