Shooting breaks out on Anjouan

Shooting broke out on Monday in the breakaway Comoran island of Anjouan as a military committee that took power earlier this month finally nominated one of their members, Mohamed Bacar, as head of state, news reports said. An AFP correspondent on Anjouan said soldiers of the Rapid Intervention Section (SIR), which served as the bodyguard of Said Abeid Abderemane who was toppled on 9 August, occupied the offices of Anjouan radio and the main port and had opened fire near the radio station. The soldiers were reportedly protesting over their alleged neglect at the hands of the Indian Ocean island’s new rulers. “We have been betrayed, we must know our fate,” one of them told AFP.

Since Abeid’s fall, Anjouan has been ruled by a so-called “presidium” of three gendarme majors backed by a commission of junior officers. Reuters quoted local radio as announcing Bacar’s leadership on Monday, ending the speculation over who would head the new regime. Bacar was chief of the troubled island’s gendarmerie until the bloodless coup. The military committee said they took power because of Abeid’s corrupt and autocratic rule. They have vowed to pursue efforts made by Abeid to bring Anjouan back into the Comoran federation, after the island’s unilateral secession in 1997.