'Several' deaths in thwarted Benin coup: government

COTONOU, Benin: Several people died in Benin during a thwarted coup attempt on the weekend, the west African country’s government announced Monday after an emergency cabinet meeting.

Early Sunday, “violent clashes” erupted between the coup plotters and the Republican Guard at the Cotonou residence of President Patrice Talon, resulting in “casualties on both sides”, according to the government.

Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff General Bertin Bada.

Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested.

“The small group of soldiers who organised the mutiny planned to remove the president of the republic from office, to subjugate the Republic’s institutions and to challenge the established order,” said the government’s secretary general, Edouard Ouin-Ouro, according to cabinet meeting minutes.

“They initially attempted to neutralise or kidnap certain generals and senior army officers,” he added.

The plotters, who staged their mutiny at the Togbin base in the capital, according to the government, abducted Sunday night the chief of staff of the National Guard, Faizou Gomina, and also General Abou Issa, army chief of staff.

Both men were eventually released in Tchaourou, a central city located more than 350 km (215 miles) from Cotonou.

The army “surrounded the Togbin base” on Sunday, where “targeted, surgical airstrikes were then carried out, without exposing surrounding neighbourhoods” to danger, the government said.

Benin says it received military assistance for the strikes from the Nigerian army and from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which announced the deployment of soldiers from four countries in the region.

Those troops are “currently housed” at the Togbin base, which “has been retaken,” according to Ouin-Ouro.

“This operation was carried out successfully, without loss of life,” and “the last attackers … fled,” the government stated.