The UK has signed a £3.4bn ($4.6bn) deal to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while retaining control of a UK-US military base on Diego Garcia - the largest of the islands.

A former inhabitant of the Chagos Archipelago—expelled when the U.S. built its military base there in the early 1970s—and his granddaughter in ... and Diego Garcia offered a strategic location.

The Chagos Archipelago is made up of about 60 islands located about 1,500 miles south of India, ... “Diego Garcia … is a very valuable basing facility due to its location in the Indian Ocean.

Based on the agreement, the Chagos archipelago will now be administered by Mauritius, while the UK and US will be expected to potentially pay billions to keep using the location for military purposes.

The Chagos Islands, an archipelago of 58 islands in the Indian Ocean about halfway between Tanzania and ... Diego Garcia's location allows for deployment of air and naval forces across the ...

The UK has asked for "strong protections" for a joint UK-US military base on the Chagos Islands. Britain agreed last year to ...

The Chagos Archipelago became a British territory in 1814. In 1965, the U.K. formally separated the islands from its then-colony Mauritius, before Mauritius gained independence three years later.

Women take part in a protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London, after a court ruling decided Chagos Islanders are not allowed to return to their homeland, Wednesday Oct. 22, 2008 ...

It has been described as the most strategically vital U.S. military installation in the world, but the Diego Garcia air base is at the center of a bitter geopolitical fight.

Because of its remote location and protected status, Chagos was the perfect place to study global issues such as climate change and overfishing that threaten the long-term survival of coral reefs.

The islands, also known as the Chagos Archipelago - comprised of seven atolls with about 60 individual islands - were separated from Mauritius in 1965, when Mauritius was still a British colony.