On the night of 12-13 May 1978, a force of about fifty mercenaries led by French colonel Bob (Robert) Denard, mostly former French paratroopers, landed at Itsandra Beach near the capital and overthrew President Ali Soilih, whose radical secular-socialist policies had left him with little popular or military support; the regular Comorian armed forces offered no resistance. The operation restored exiled former president Ahmed Abdallah to power. Soilih was taken into custody and killed under disputed circumstances on 29 May 1978, officially said to have been shot while trying to escape.
Most Comorans reportedly welcomed the change after growing tired of Soilih's increasingly repressive rule. Within weeks the country was reconstituted as the Federal and Islamic Republic of the Comoros (24 May 1978), Abdallah was elected unopposed as president that October, and Denard remained in the islands for the next decade as commander of Abdallah's presidential guard.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Target identified in Coup Atlas research: Ali Soilih, President of Comoros
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Ali Soilih (President of Comoros, overthrown and killed)
Bob Denard / Col. Robert Denard (French mercenary leader)
Ahmed Abdallah (exiled former president, restored to power)
Said Attoumani (Comorian politician named by one source as leading the rebellion / heading the provisional government)
Sources
The May 1978 coup was led by French national Col. Robert (Bob) Denard and a group of European mercenaries, and it brought exiled former president Ahmed Abdallah back into power.
A mercenary force of about fifty men, mostly former French paratroopers, landed at Itsandra Beach north of the capital on May 12, 1978, and Comoros' regular armed forces offered no resistance.
SOURCE REVIEWEDU.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, "Comoros - The Soilih Regime"open source ↗
Ali Soilih, the deposed head of state, was killed under mysterious circumstances on May 29, 1978; the official explanation was that he had attempted to escape.
SOURCE REVIEWEDU.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, "Comoros - The Soilih Regime"open source ↗
Bob Denard had, ironically, also played a role in the 1975 coup that first brought Ali Soilih to power, before leading the 1978 mercenary force that overthrew him.
SOURCE REVIEWEDU.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, "Comoros - The Soilih Regime"open source ↗
Most Comorans supported the coup, having grown weary of Soilih's increasingly ineffective and repressive rule.
SOURCE REVIEWEDU.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, "Comoros - The Soilih Regime"open source ↗
In the coup's aftermath, the Federal and Islamic Republic of the Comoros was proclaimed on May 24, 1978, and Ahmed Abdallah was elected president without opposition on October 22, 1978.
SOURCE REVIEWEDUniversity of Central Arkansas Political Science, Dictators and Democrats (DADM) Project, Comoros country profileopen source ↗
For eleven years (1978 to 1989), Denard headed Abdallah's 500-strong presidential guard and held strong influence and business interests in the Comoros archipelago.
INDIRECT CITATIONWikipedia, citing Le Figaro, "L'ancien mercenaire Bob Denard est mort," 2007open source ↗
Editorial Note
Sources agree on the core narrative but disagree on some details. (1) Mercenary force size: 50 per the U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies and Wikipedia's Ali Soilih article, versus 43 per a footnote on Wikipedia's Bob Denard article and 80 per the (unverified) History Guild article; I used the directly-verified figure of fifty. (2) "Who led" the coup: Britannica and countrystudies.us attribute leadership to mercenary commander Bob Denard, while the UCA/DADM source states the rebellion was "led by Said Atthoumani" -- Wikipedia's dedicated coup article resolves this by describing Atthoumani as head of the resulting provisional government rather than the mercenary force's commander, but the underlying sources are not fully consistent on the word "led." (3) Financing: an independently-fetched History Guild article says Denard personally financed the operation via a loan against a car dealership and was paid afterward by Abdallah to rebuild the Comorian army, whereas Wikipedia's coup article (not independently verified beyond its own text) says Abdallah and former vice-president Mohamed Ahmed financed the mercenaries upfront; I omitted a financing fact from the verified list because of this conflict. (4) Manner of Soilih's death: official account says shot while trying to escape (verified via countrystudies.us); some secondary accounts referenced only on Wikipedia suggest he may have been bayoneted rather than shot, which I could not verify against a primary source. (5) Exact date: the Cline Center dataset codes the event as 1978-05-13; the Library of Congress country study frames the mercenary landing as occurring "on May 12, 1978," while the UCA source frames the rebellion as spanning "May 12-13, 1978," consistent with the coup's completion/consolidation on the 13th. | Fetched all 7 VERIFIED source URLs live: Britannica (2 facts), countrystudies.us LOC country study (4 facts), UCA/DADM Comoros profile (1 fact). All quotes matched the live page text verbatim. Also checked the CHAIN fact (Wikipedia, Bob Denard) and confirmed the 500-strong presidential guard / 1978-1989 sentence carries an inline footnote [7] that resolves specifically to the cited Le Figaro 2007 obituary, not to an unrelated or missing reference. target_leader (Ali Soilih, President of Comoros) is directly supported by the same verified Britannica quote used for fact 1/2. Summary contains no claims beyond what the sourced facts support. The entry's own 'notes' field transparently discloses real source disagreements (force size 50 vs 43 vs 80, 'who led' ambiguity re: Said Atthoumani, financing dispute, manner-of-death dispute) rather than concealing them, and appropriately excluded a financing fact and downplayed the 'led' framing rather than overclaiming -- this is evidence of careful, honest sourcing rather than a red flag. No dead links, no fabricated quotes, no invented Wikipedia claims found.
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Ali Soilih, President of Comoros.
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; killed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
“Regime in Comoros Ousted by Military,” May 14, 1978
“Ex-Comoro Island Chief Reported Shot to Death While Trying to Escape,” May 30, 1978
Xinhua General News Service
“Coup D’E´tat takes place in Comoros,” May 15, 1978
The Sun
“Comoran Chief Ousted by Military, Radio Reports,” May 16, 1978
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →