The head of a Malagasy king killed by French troops during a colonial-era war has been formally returned to Madagascar.

The handover of King Toera's skull - and those of two other members of his court - took place at a ceremony at the culture ministry in Paris.

The skulls had been brought to France at the end of the 19th Century and stored at the Museum of Natural History in the French capital.

It is the first use of a new law meant to expedite the return of human remains from collections in France.

"These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence," French Culture Minister Rachida Dati is quoted by the AFP agency as saying at the ceremony.

In August 1897, a French force sent to assert colonial control over the Menabé kingdom of the Sakalava people in western Madagascar massacred a local army.

King Toera was killed and decapitated: his head sent to Paris where it was placed in the archives of the Museum of Natural History.

Nearly 130 years later pressure from the king's descendants as well as the government of the Indian Ocean nation has opened the way for the skull's return.

There is no DNA proof that the skull is King Toera's - tests carried out several years ago were inconclusive. Ultimately it was a traditional Sakalava spirit medium who confirmed the skull was that of the monarch.

Madagascar's Culture Minister Volamiranty Donna Mara, who also gave a speech at the handover, said the return of skulls was a "significant gesture", AFP reports.

"Their absence has been, for more than a century... an open wound in the heart of our island," she said.

It is not the first time human remains from the colonial era have been given back by France.

Most famous was the South African woman cruelly nicknamed the "Hottentot Venus" who had once been put on display in Europe and whose body was taken home in 2002.

But this is the first return under a recent law which makes the process much easier.

It is estimated that at the Museum of Natural History alone there are more than 20,000 human remains brought to France from around the world for supposedly scientific reasons.