Comoros president makes first appearance since attack

Comoros President Azali Assoumani on Thursday chaired a government cabinet meeting in his first public appearance since being wounded in a knife attack last week, government footage showed.

Assoumani is seen in the video with a thick bandage on the left side of his forehead, smiling as he got into a car and arriving at the presidential compound.

He greeted advisors and ministers before sitting at the end of the cabinet table where he looked through files.

AFP correspondents saw the president’s motorcade enter the presidential compound, but reporters were not allowed in.

The 65-year-old president had not been seen since he was wounded on Friday by a young soldier during the funeral of a religious leader in Salimani-Itsandra, on the outskirts of the capital Moroni.

The government said his injuries were “not serious” and that he was fine.

But his unusual absence from the Mawlid religious celebrations in Moroni, an important event in the small Indian Ocean archipelago of some 870,000 people who mostly practice Islam, raised questions.

One of Assoumani’s advisors and a diplomat told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that the Comoros leader had cancelled his attendance at the UN General Assembly, due to begin in New York on September 22.