French Mercenaries Attack Tiny Nation Comoro Islands President Being Held Hostage At Palace

Bob Denard, the infamous French mercenary whose dogs of war have left bloody footprints in African conflicts for three decades, led a band of fellow mercenaries in battle against government forces on the Comoro Islands Thursday in his fourth attempt to take over the tiny Indian Ocean nation.

Denard, 66, a former French commando, resurfaced only two years after retiring and pledging to put his fighting years behind him.

With about 20 mercenaries and support from former local rebels, he attacked without warning in Moroni, capital of the Comoros, where he once married, fathered two children, even converted to Islam to show his bona fides to the locals.

With his forces blasting away on the volcanic Grande Comore island, Denard holed up in the presidential palace with President Said Mohamed Djohar as hostage, the Reuter news agency reported.

Denard’s forces fought for control of the radio station, seized the airport, released inmates from prison and battled Comoran troops. The clashes left an unknown number of people dead and wounded, the Associated Press reported. Thursday night, communication with the islands, always spotty, were cut.

“There are dead and wounded, but we don’t know how many,” Achim Said, spokesman for the Comoran Embassy in Paris, told the AP. “The situation is very alarming. These people are highly experienced in matters of terrorism.”

Situated off the southeast coast of Africa between Mozambique and Madagascar, the Comoro Republic is a poverty-stricken archipelago of three islands whose largely Islamic, French- and Arabic-speaking population of 500,000 is among the world’s poorest. Comoros declared independence from France in 1975, but a fourth island, Mayotte, remains under French administration.

The islands are a popular destination for tourists from France and South Africa, once a Comoran patron. Among scores of tourists stranded by Thursday’s fighting were 104 South Africans whose Emirates Air flight, responding to news of the coup attempt, bypassed Hahaya Airport outside Moroni and flew to Johannesburg without them.

Tourists received free drinks at their beachfront resorts while fighting raged in the capital, some 30 miles away, said Peter Benton of Johannesburg’s World Leisure Holidays, which booked the vacation. “They know less about what is going on than we do,” he said. South Africa’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the tourists on the island appeared safe.

The South African government, which under a previous white-minority regime paid Denard and gave him sanctuary, condemned Thursday’s attempted coup. The Foreign Ministry said. South Africa called for the “immediate restoration of the elected government and for restraint by those responsible for the coup attempt.”