Troops regain control of rebel Comoros island

The self-styled president of a breakaway island in the Indian Ocean has been forced from power following a successful invasion backed by France.

Mohamed Bacar, who seized power on Anjouan island in a 2001 coup and held his own flawed elections last year, was threatening to break away from the three-island Union of the Comoros.

However, hundreds of Comoran government and African Union soldiers have launched a seaborne raid at dawn to topple him.

Witnesses said that Mr Bacar's forces, thought to number less than 400, raised barely any resistance to the boatloads of troops.

The French-trained former gendarme had fled his presidential palace and reportedly tried to slip away from Anjouan dressed as a woman in a dugout canoe.

"Anjouan island is under the total control of the army," said a Comoran military spokesman.

"So far we have no dead or wounded to lament. The rebel chiefs have all run away, and none has yet been found."

Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, the president of the Union of the Comoros, has now promised fresh elections on Anjouan.

Comoros, an Islamic former French colony to the north of Madagascar, has suffered 20 coups or attempted coups since independence in 1975.

The chronic instability has made its 650,000 people some of the poorest on earth, with their key exports limited to cloves, vanilla and ylang ylang, a spice used in perfumes.