John Aglionby, Jakarta – East Timor's president, Jose Ramos Horta, was shot in the stomach in a pre-dawn attack on his home by fugitive members of the country's armed forces, a presidential spokesman said Monday.

Agusto Junior said the Nobel peace laureate, who was elected president last year, was undergoing surgery at an Australian military base in East Timor and would probably be evacuated to the nearby Australian city of Darwin for further treatment. "He will survive, and this country will survive," Jose Guterres, the deputy prime minister, told reporters.

Mr Guterres said two cars drew up to Mr Horta's house, two kilometres outside the capital Dili, before dawn and the occupants opened fire. Guards retaliated and the attackers fled.

An army spokesman said Alfredo Reinado, an army major who has been on the run since leading a rebellion in March 2006, was killed in the incident.

East Timor television reported that the house of Xanana Gusmao, the prime minister, was also attacked but that no one was hurt in that incident.

Security forces deployed in large numbers around Dili on Monday morning but the city appeared peaceful.

The opposition Fretilin party condemned the attack. Mari Alkatiri, prime minister until 2006 and still party secretary-general, said Fretilin was "shocked that this has happened".

"This comes as a total surprise given the recent positive developments, as a result of the president's tireless efforts to find a mechanism of national political consensus to find solutions to the critical issues that are faced by our country," he said.

The precise motivation for the attack is not yet clear. Last August, Mr Horta met Reinado, who was also wanted on murder charges in relation to the 2006 unrest, in a bid to get him to surrender. The talks failed and Reinado had threatened to incite new unrest.

His 2006 rebellion triggered the implosion of the fledgling nation's security forces and left the country on its knees. More than 1,500 Australian-led international forces were deployed to restore order after 37 people were killed and some 150,000 fled their homes. Thousands still remain in refugee camps.

Calm was restored and relatively peaceful elections were held last year. These saw Mr Horta, who took over as prime minister during the crisis after Mr Alkatiri was forced to resign, swap jobs with Mr Gusmao, then president.

East Timor became independent in 2002 after 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation ended in 1999. The United Nations ran the former Portuguese colony for three years and then downsized its presence very rapidly, which analysts considered a significant contributing factor to the 2006 chaos.

Mr Horta shared the Nobel peace prize in 1996 with Carlos Belo, then the Catholic bishop of Dili, in recognition of their efforts to end Indonesian occupation.