What happened during the 1978 military coup in Mauritania?

In July 1978, the first president of independent Mauritania, Moktar Ould Daddah, was deposed and sent into exile following a military coup d’état.12

The primary catalyst for the coup was widespread dissatisfaction with the government's costly and difficult efforts to suppress the Polisario Front guerrillas in the portion of Western Sahara that Mauritania had annexed in 1976. The military takeover was led by the chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Mustapha Ould Salek, who subsequently established a military government that replaced the presidential regime that had been in place since 1960.123