Politics
Benin president says coup bid thwarted, vows retribution
- President Talon says situation under control.
- A group of soldiers earlier claimed to have seized power.
- Coup attempt comes ahead of presidential elections.
COTONOU: Benin President Patrice Talon said on Sunday that the West African nation’s government and armed forces had thwarted a coup attempt by a group of soldiers and vowed to punish them.
Talon’s announcement on Sunday evening came about 12 hours after gunfire first rang out in several neighbourhoods of Cotonou, the country’s biggest city and commercial hub, and soldiers went on state television to say they had removed Talon from power.
Forces loyal to Talon “stood firm, recaptured our positions, and cleared the last pockets of resistance held by the mutineers,” Talon said in his own televised statement.
“This commitment and mobilisation enabled us to defeat these adventurers and to prevent the worst for our country… This treachery will not go unpunished.”
Talon said his thoughts were with victims of the coup attempt as well as with a number of people held by the fleeing mutineers, without giving details. Reuters was unable to verify if there were casualties or hostages.
The unrest was the latest threat to democratic rule in the region, where militaries have in recent years seized power in Benin’s neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as in Mali, Guinea and, only last month, Guinea-Bissau.
But it was an unexpected development in Benin, where the last successful coup took place in 1972.
A government spokesperson, Wilfried Leandre Houngbedji, said that 14 people had been arrested in connection with the coup attempt as of Sunday afternoon, without providing details.
At the request of Talon’s government, Nigeria sent air force fighter jets to take over Benin’s airspace to help dislodge the coup plotters from the state television network and a military camp, a statement from Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s office said.
Nigeria has also sent ground troops, the statement said.
West Africa’s regional bloc ECOWAS and the African Union condemned the coup attempt.
In a subsequent statement, ECOWAS said it had ordered the immediate deployment of elements of its standby force to Benin, including troops from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Gunfire and explosions rettle biggest city
At least eight soldiers, several holding weapons, had appeared on state television on Sunday morning to announce that a military committee led by Colonel Tigri Pascal was dissolving national institutions, suspending the constitution and closing air, land and maritime borders.
“The army solemnly commits to give the Beninese people the hope of a truly new era, where fraternity, justice and work prevail,” the soldiers’ statement said.
The soldiers mentioned the deteriorating security situation in northern Benin “coupled with the disregard and neglect of our fallen brothers-in-arms.”
Talon has been credited with reviving the economy since taking office in 2016, but the country has also seen an increase in attacks by jihadist militants that have wreaked havoc in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Foreign Minister Olushegun Adjadi Bakari told Reuters that the soldiers had only managed to briefly take control of the state TV network.
Gunfire could be heard early Sunday in several neighbourhoods of Cotonou as residents were trying to make their way to church.
The French embassy said gunfire had been reported near Talon’s residence in Cotonou and urged citizens to stay at home.
By early afternoon, police were deployed at major intersections in the city centre.
Narcisse, a furniture salesman in Cotonou who gave only his first name for safety reasons, said he first heard gunshots at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and soon saw police officers speeding past.
“I got scared and brought my sofas inside and closed. It’s a bit calmer now, which is why I reopened,” he said.
More gunfire and explosions were heard in Cotonou early Sunday evening, witnesses said, but the sounds had stopped before Talon’s statement was broadcast.
Election on the horizon
Benin is preparing for a presidential election in April that is expected to mark the end of Talon’s tenure.
Last month, Benin adopted a new constitution creating a Senate and extending the presidential mandate from five to seven years, in what critics said was a power grab by the ruling coalition, which has nominated Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni to be its candidate.
The opposition Democrats party, founded by Talon’s predecessor Thomas Boni Yayi, saw its proposed candidate rejected because of what a court ruled was insufficient backing from lawmakers.
The deteriorating security situation in the north was likely a factor behind the soldiers’ actions, said Nina Wilen, director for the Africa Programme at the Egmont Institute for International Relations in Belgium.
Benin has been the hardest hit among coastal West African states by jihadist groups that have made major gains in the central Sahel, she said, a fact underscored by major attacks in January and April that killed dozens of soldiers.
Nevertheless, she said Sunday’s coup attempt was a surprise given Benin’s relative stability following a spate of coups and coup attempts in the first decades after independence from France in 1960.
“No coups in 50 years? That’s a major feat for a country in West Africa,” she said.
- Thai army says one soldier killed in border clashes.
- Military facilities targeted in air strikes: Thai Air Force
- Ex-Cambodian leader urges forces to exercise restraint.
BANGKOK/PHNOM PENH Thailand said it launched airstrikes into Cambodia on Monday as fighting broke out in multiple areas along their disputed border, after both countries accused the other of breaching a ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump.
At least one Thai soldier had been killed and eight were wounded in the fresh clashes that intensified around 5am local time (2200 GMT), a Thai army spokesperson said, adding that air support was called in to hit Cambodian military targets.
Thailand’s Air Force said that Cambodia mobilised heavy weaponry, repositioned combat units and prepared support elements that could escalate military operations.
“These developments prompted the use of air power to deter and reduce Cambodia’s military capabilities,” it said in a statement.
Cambodia’s defence ministry said in a statement that the Thai military had launched dawn attacks on its forces at two locations, following days of provocative actions, and added that Cambodian troops had not responded.
Cambodia’s influential former longtime leader Hun Sen, father of current premier Hun Manet, said Thailand’s military was “aggressors” seeking to provoke a retaliatory response and urged Cambodian forces to exercise restraint.
“The red line for responding has already been set,” Hun Sen said on Facebook, without elaborating. “I urge commanders at all levels to educate all officers and soldiers accordingly”.
Three Cambodian civilians have been seriously injured in the fighting so far, according to a senior provincial official. Cambodia’s defence ministry said its forces had not retaliated.
A simmering border dispute between the countries erupted into a five-day conflict in July, before a ceasefire deal brokered by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Trump, who also witnessed the signing of an expanded peace agreement between the two countries in Kuala Lumpur in October.
Renewed fighting and risks
Anwar, chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc, urged both sides to exercise maximum restraint and maintain open channels of communication.
“The renewed fighting risks unravelling the careful work that has gone into stabilising relations between the two neighbours,” Anwar said in a post on X.
Southeast Asian countries have rarely engaged in military clashes among themselves in recent decades, with the use of cross-border air strikes even rarer.
Phichet Pholkoet, a resident of Thailand’s Ban Kruat district which adjoins Cambodia, said he has heard gunfire since early Monday morning.
“It startled me. The explosions were very clear. Boom boom!” he said via telephone. “I could hear everything clearly. Some are heavy artillery, some are small arms.”
In Thailand, more than 385,000 civilians across four border districts were being evacuated, with more than 35,000 already housed in temporary shelters, the Thai military said.
Across the border in Cambodia, opposition politician Meach Sovannara said civilians were also moving away from the fighting along the frontier.
“I heard the artillery shelling,” he told Reuters in an audio message from Samroang town, the capital of Oddar Meanchey Province, which abuts Thailand.
More than 1,100 families in Oddar Meanchey had been evacuated, authorities there said.
At least 48 people were killed and an estimated 300,000 temporarily displaced during the July clashes, with the neighbours exchanging rockets and heavy artillery fire for five days.
Un-demarcated points along border
Thailand and Cambodia have for more than a century contested sovereignty at un-demarcated points along their 817-km (508-mile) land border, first mapped in 1907 by France when it ruled Cambodia as a colony.
The long-standing dispute has occasionally exploded into skirmishes, such as a weeklong artillery exchange in 2011, despite attempts to peacefully resolve overlapping claims.
Tensions began rising in May this year, following the killing of a Cambodian soldier during a brief exchange of gunfire, and steadily escalated into diplomatic spats and armed clashes.
Although Anwar and Trump were able to halt the fighting within days and then cemented a ceasefire agreement at a regional summit in October.
Thailand said it was halting the implementation of the truce with Cambodia last month, following a landmine blast that maimed one of its soldiers.
Thailand has repeatedly accused Cambodia of planting fresh landmines along parts of their disputed border, which have seriously injured at least seven Thai soldiers since July. Phnom Penh denies the charge.
Some of the mines found along the frontier were likely newly laid, Reuters reported in October, based on expert analysis of material shared by Thailand’s military.
- UN funding falls to 10-year low, less than 1/3 of appeal met.
- Gaza, Syria and Sudan need most support for 2026.
- US remains top donor even after drastic aid cuts.
The United Nations on Monday appealed for an aid budget only half the size of what it had hoped for this year, acknowledging a plunge in donor funding at a time when humanitarian needs have never been greater.
By its own admission, the $23 billion UN appeal will shut out tens of millions of people in urgent need of help as falling support has forced it to prioritise only the most desperate.
The funding cuts come on top of other challenges for aid agencies that include security risks to staff in conflict zones and a lack of access.
“It’s the cuts ultimately that are forcing us into these tough, tough, brutal choices that we’re having to make,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher told reporters.
“We are overstretched, underfunded, and under attack,” he said. “And we drive the ambulance towards the fire. On your behalf. But we are also now being asked to put the fire out. And there is not enough water in the tank. And we’re being shot at.”
A year ago, the UN sought some $47 billion for 2025 – a figure that was later pared back as the scale of aid cuts by US President Donald Trump, as well as other top Western donors such as Germany, began to emerge.
November figures showed it had received only $12 billion so far, the lowest in 10 years, covering just over a quarter of needs.
Next year’s $23 billion plan identifies 87 million people deemed as priority cases whose lives are on the line. Yet it says around a quarter of a billion need urgent assistance, and that it will aim to help 135 million of them at a cost of $33 billion – if it has the means.
The biggest single appeal of $4 billion is for the occupied Palestinian territories. Most of that is for Gaza, devastated by the two-year Israel-Hamas conflict, which has left nearly all of its 2.3 million inhabitants homeless and dependent on aid.
Second is Sudan, followed by Syria.
Fletcher said humanitarian groups faced a bleak scenario of growing hunger, spreading disease and record violence.
“(The appeal) is laser-focused on saving lives where the shocks hit hardest: wars, climate disasters, earthquakes, epidemics, crop failures,” he said.
UN humanitarian agencies are overwhelmingly reliant on voluntary donations by Western donors, with the United States by far the top historical donor.
UN data showed it continued to hold the number one spot in 2025 despite Trump’s cuts but that its share had shrunk from over a third of the total to 15.6% this year.
- Army received reports of attack on soldiers with fire weapons: Thai army.
- Thailand begins “using aircraft to strike military targets in several areas”.
- Cambodia alleges Thailand fired “multiple shots at Tamone Thom temple”.
Thailand launched air strikes on its neighbour Cambodia on Monday, the Thai army said, with both sides trading blame for the latest eruption of fighting on their disputed border which killed a Thai soldier.
After Cambodian troops fired on Thai forces early Monday morning in Ubon Ratchathani province, “the Army received reports that Thai soldiers were attacked with supporting fire weapons, resulting in one soldier killed and four wounded”, Thai army spokesman Winthai Suvaree said in a statement.
Winthai also said Thailand had begun “using aircraft to strike military targets in several areas” to suppress attacks by Cambodian forces.
Cambodia’s defence ministry spokeswoman Maly Socheata said Thai forces launched an attack on Cambodian troops in the border provinces of Preah Vihear and Oddar Meanchey early Monday morning, accusing Thailand of “firing multiple shots with tanks at Tamone Thom temple” and other areas near Preah Vihear temple.
She said Cambodia did not retaliate.
Met Measpheakdey, a Cambodian spokesman for the Oddar Meanchey provincial administration, said gunfire was reported in the areas of the centuries-old Tamone Thom and Ta Krabei temples, and a “number of villagers who live near the border are fleeing to safety”.
Thailand’s Second Army Region said in a statement that around 35,000 people in Thailand have been evacuated from areas along the border with Cambodia since the renewed fighting.
Both sides reported a brief skirmish on Sunday, which Thailand’s military had said left two soldiers wounded.
Five days of clashes erupted between Thailand and Cambodia this summer, killing 43 people and displacing around 300,000 before a truce took effect.
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