Several people died over the weekend in Benin during a failed coup attempt, the government announced Monday following an emergency cabinet meeting.
Violent clashes broke out early Sunday between the putschists and the Republican Guard at President Patrice Talon’s Cotonou residence, leaving casualties on both sides. Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, General Bertin Bada, who was fatally wounded in an earlier attack by the coup plotters.
Authorities said some of the plotters remained at large as of Monday, while about a dozen had been arrested.
“The small group of soldiers who organised the mutiny planned to remove the president, subvert the Republic’s institutions, and challenge the established order,” Secretary General Edouard Ouin-Ouro said, according to cabinet meeting minutes. “They initially attempted to neutralise or kidnap senior generals and army officers.”
The mutiny, staged at the Togbin base in Cotonou, also saw the abduction of National Guard Chief of Staff Faizou Gomina and Army Chief of Staff General Abou Issa. Both were later released in Tchaourou, over 350 km from the capital.
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The government continues to investigate and pursue remaining suspects as security agencies tighten control across the country.
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.
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“This operation was carried out successfully, without loss of life,” and “the last attackers … fled,” the government stated.
