Comoros has delayed an election due on Sunday on the mutinous island of Anjouan for one week after police there shot three civilians during political unrest, national radio said late on Thursday. The coup-prone Indian Ocean archipelago was due to elect local presidents for its three main islands. The authorities said polls would go ahead as planned this weekend on Grande Comore and Moheli, but Anjouan's would be postponed to June 17.

African Union soldiers were on their way to Comoros on Friday to help keep the peace during next month's elections on the volatile Indian Ocean islands where one local president has refused to stand down. National government spokesperson Abdourahim Said Bacar said 40 AU troops were due to arrive later on Friday.

In an exchange of gunfire, national government troops stationed on Anjouan, one of the three semi-autonomous islands that make up Comoros, clashed with local police on Wednesday, according to local media. Elections for each island are scheduled in June, but the archipelago's delicate power-sharing agreement hangs in the balance.

A probe into more than 30 senior former public officials accused of corruption is proof of the new Comoran government's commitment to tackling graft, Vice-President Idi Nadhoim told IRIN. Moderate Sunni Muslim religious leader Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi was elected president last month in the first peaceful change of power since the country's independence from France in 1975.

Islamist Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi won Sunday's election on the Comoros Islands, provisional results show (May 14). Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi was seen as the favourite and he won 58% of the vote, the electoral board said. Supporters of the cleric, known as "Ayatollah" after his studies in Iran, were celebrating in the streets as early as Monday, confident of victory.