Comoros fighting goes on after Anjouan is reclaimed

Fighting continued today on the island of Anjouan after troops from Comoros took control of its capital to throw out rebels who have controlled it for the past year.

Explosions and gunfire started before dawn as hundreds of troops moved in as part of a long-threatened invasion backed by the African Union.

“We have now taken the Anjouan capital,” Defence Chief of Staff Mohamed Dosara said by phone from the main island of Grand Comore. “We have met a small amount of resistance.”

Anjouan island’s seaport was under the control of AU troops, however, about a dozen armed men, claiming to be loyal to renegade colonel Mohamed Bacar, appeared in control just over a mile outside the capital, Mutsamudu, and awaiting an attack.

Gunshots were still also heard inside the capital, although cheering crowds welcoming the AU troops were able to walk through the streets.

The Comoros, an archipelago of three main islands 250 miles off Africa’s south-east coast with a population of about 750,000, has been caught up in a series of coups and political upheavals since gaining independence from France in 1975. The late Bob Denard, a notorious French mercenary, controlled the Comoros behind a figurehead leader for most of the 1980s following a coup he led.

Bacar’s takeover of Anjouan island drew increasingly strident warnings from the central government.

Mr Dosara said troops were searching for Bacar, a former president of Anjouan who has said he is seeking the island’s independence.

Mohamed Kassim Adong, who lives in the coastal Anjouan town of Domoni, said he saw soldiers going house-to-house conducting searches.

Several hundred soldiers, including at least 80 AU troops from Tanzania, were among the initial landing force that arrived aboard four ships, authorities said. About 100 Comoros military reinforcements later arrived by sea, along with six pickup trucks mounted with machine guns, and began fanning out on the island.

One Comoros officer, who asked not to be named, said government forces had arrested three “high-ranking officers” loyal to Bacar.

Each of the three main islands of Comoros has a regional president under the country’s main leader, President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, who is based in Moroni on Grand Comore.

“I have ordered the army to invade Anjouan to liberate the island from the hands of Mohamed Bacar,” Mr Sambi said.