African-backed Comoros forces take rebel island

By Ahmed Ali Amir

MORONI (Reuters) - Troops from the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros seized the rebel island of Anjouan on Tuesday with African Union military help, and the government said its self-declared leader had fled dressed as a woman.

The forces attacked at dawn to topple Mohamed Bacar, a French-trained former gendarme who took power in 2001 and clung on after an illegal election last year on the wooded, hilly island of 300,000 people.

"Anjouan island is under total control of the army," Major Ahmed Sidi told reporters on the neighbouring island of Moheli.

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

A federal government spokesman said Bacar had been spotted in the village of Sandapoini from where he was thought to be trying to escape by boat to the nearby French-run island of Mayotte.

"It seems, according to various sources, that he is dressed as a woman," the spokesman, Abdourahim Said Bacar, told Reuters.

With phone connections to Anjouan cut, there was no independent confirmation of that.

From early morning, gunfire and explosions echoed across Anjouan, one of three islands in the coup-prone archipelago that won independence from France in 1975.