Mauritania’s capital was calm on Thursday as the country waited for announcements from a group of officers who said they had seized power to end more than two decades of “totalitarian” rule by the president.

Triumphant crowds cheered a statement broadcast on state media on Wednesday that President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya had been overthrown in an apparently bloodless coup, the latest in a series of attempts to oust him in recent years.