AS I entered the Kyrgyz President’s office, an elderly opposition activist in a pointed white felt hat was sitting at the presidential desk, banging his fists and admiring the chaos before him. “Look,” he told me, puffing out his chest. “This is our revolution.”

Around him protesters smashed pictures, pocketed ornaments and posed for photographs in the sumptuous office from which Askar Akayev, the President of Kyrgyzstan, ruled for 15 years until yesterday.

In Mr Akayev’s personal quarters I found a protester in a general’s hat raiding the fridge. Another was having a go on the President’s exercise bike and a third was trying on his multicoloured ceremonial felt robes. The President himself had fled.

This was the moment when Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian nation of five million people, became the third former Soviet republic in 18 months to topple its leader after rigged elections — the latest example of autocratic regimes being swept away by “people power”.

Two hours earlier I had been watching a peaceful protest of about 10,000 people calling for the President to resign over the elections.

Wearing pink or yellow armbands, they were demanding a “lemon” or “tulip” revolution, modelled on last year’s Orange Revolution in Ukraine and Georgia’s Rose Revolution.

As they marched through Bishkek, the capital, to the central square, next to the presidential headquarters, they seemed far too passive to pull it off.

No one was sure how the demonstration turned violent, but in a few dramatic hours it toppled a regime that had endured since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Several hundred Akayev supporters were loitering near by in blue armbands. Some witnesses said that they began throwing stones. Within seconds the protest became a riot. Akayev supporters and police charged the crowd, who retaliated by hurling paving stones ripped from the square, and stole some of their batons and shields.

Both sides retreated, until a new band of protesters arrived from the southern city of Osh, which the opposition seized last weekend. They marched up to the lines of riot police in front of the presidential headquarters.

The police charged but had to retreat after 20 minutes of running battles, leaving only the national guard protecting the seat of power. “They will not give up. They are military men, they have their orders,” their commander, General Abdigul Chudbayev, said.

The police regrouped and charged on horseback but that seemed only to excite the protesters in a country where most people are born horseriders. One man unseated an officer, mounted his horse, and galloped through the crowd.

By now several dozen protesters and police had been severely beaten and the ground was littered with debris and blood. The protesters’ numbers had swollen to about 50,000. Emboldened, they surged into the compound, many wearing helmets and carrying shields captured from the police.

The national guard fled inside. No one knew if they would open fire but the crowd smashed the windows and beat down the doors. There they streamed up the marble staircase, screaming jubilantly, smashed the windows and beat down the doors.

The scene inside was straight from Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin. Protesters streamed up the marble main staircase, screaming jubilantly, tearing down decorations and smashing furniture. The floor was covered in broken glass and water.

A few terrified officials scurried for the exits. “They’ll kill us,” one woman screamed as colleagues ushered her downstairs.

The protesters, many fired up with alcohol, were more interested in looting the building of equipment, food and drink.

“Can you manage this television?” one asked me as I passed a minister’s office. “My hands are full.”

The national guard, meanwhile, had left the building peacefully, cheered by the crowds outside. I joined the protesters heading to Mr Akayev’s seventh-floor suite. There we found three nervous guards at his door. “Why don’t they let me shoot?” one, an ethnic Russian, asked as we barged past. “This is a war.”

But Chingis, a presidential adviser who stayed behind, said that the security forces had been ordered not to open fire. “Say what you like about Akayev, he would not shoot his own people,” he said.

After half an hour of looting, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the opposition leader, entered the President’s office and tried to impose some order. “I didn’t expect this,” he said, looking genuinely shocked. “I thought we were having a peaceful rally. Please, everyone, be careful.” He asked the protesters to leave and slowly they began to comply. His aides began confiscating loot at the exits.

I followed Mr Bakiyev out of the building and watched him address the jubilant, if incredulous, crowds outside.

“The authorities of Kyrgyz- stan are in the hands of the people,” he announced to a huge cheer. Within a few hours Mr Bakiyev was Prime Minister.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end