Ndjamena (Chad) (AFP) – A French tourist missing since Wednesday evening in northeastern Chad, after leaving to visit an oasis in the Sahara, was found "dead after a fall", the Chadian authorities announced on Friday.

Published on: 02/13/2026 - 1:39 p.m.

The 70-year-old retiree, from Dijon (central-eastern France), according to the French regional newspaper Le Bien Public, was part of a group of tourists visiting Chad as part of the Amdjarass International Festival of Saharan Cultures (Ficsa), about a hundred kilometers from the border with war-torn Sudan. The event began on Saturday.

“We found the lifeless body in the Bachikele mountains, and we are waiting for the prosecutor to make the report before any evacuation to N'Djamena,” Chadian Minister of Culture and Tourism, Abakar Rozzi Teguil, told AFP.

“It was the rescuers on foot who found him,” he explained, “under the foot of a mountain, (with) an empty water bottle next to him.” “He died after a fall,” added the minister.

The septuagenarian had left with a friend, also French, "without a guide", to "discover the area" of Guelta de Bachikele, an oasis in the Chadian Sahara, according to Mahamat Togou Tchohimi, local representative of the Chadian state in the region.

“Misplaced”

The two men left the group on Wednesday morning, "without prior authorization" and "outside the established supervision system", according to a press release from the Ministry of Tourism published on Thursday. Their absence was noticed early in the afternoon and a search was launched.

After two hours of searching, a first hiker was found, who indicated that he had "lost his way" after trying to "dissuade his companion from continuing his progress", we can read in the press release.

Searches by motorbike, 4X4, camelback, with drones and a reconnaissance plane from the Chadian army had been launched, according to several corroborating sources.

The victim was part of a group of around fifty tourists who came to Chad as part of a stay organized by the French travel agency Point Afrique and the French cultural association La Saharienne.

The Guelta de Bachikele is an oasis in the Ennedi massif, in northern Chad. “The area is secure,” assures Mahamat Togou Tchohimi, but it is “formally not recommended” by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which classifies it as a red zone.

Many visitors and officials had joined Amdjarass since Saturday to come and attend concerts and dance performances by artists from different regions of Chad, but also from Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

© 2026 AFP

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