The Comoros government captured the capital of the rebel island of Anjouan on Tuesday just hours after an African Union-backed military operation got under way to oust a renegade colonel who took power last May, a defense official said. Explosions and gunfire started ringing out before dawn as hundreds of troops moved in for their long-threatened invasion. There was no immediate word on casualties. «We have now taken the Anjouan capital,» Defense Chief of Staff Mohamed Dosara said by telephone 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, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. Meanwhile, about a dozen armed men who identified themselves as loyalists to renegade Col. Mohamed Bacar appeared in control about 2 kilometers (just over a mile) outside the capital, Mutsamudu, and awaited an attack. Several hundred soldiers, including at least 80 AU troops from Tanzania, were among the initial landing force that arrived aboard four ships. 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. Officials at the AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, refused to comment.
