Former Maldives president and current parliament speaker Mohamed Nasheed was injured in a blast outside his family home on Thursday, police said in a statement.

“Following an explosion... Speaker of Parliament President Mohamed Nasheed has sustained injuries and is currently receiving treatment at ADK Hospital,” the statement said.

Images from state TV channel PSM showed security services securing the scene of the incident in the capital Male. A foreign tourist was also injured, the channel reported.

“Strongly condemn the attack on Speaker of Parliament, President Mohamed Nasheed this evening,” the country’s foreign minister Abdulla Shahid, a member of Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party, said in a tweet.

“Cowardly attacks like these have no place in our society. My thoughts and prayers are with President Nasheed and others injured in this attack, as well as their families.”

The explosion went off as Nasheed, 53, was getting into his car in the capital Male, an official from his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), told AFP by telephone.

“It looks like some sort of an improvised explosive device, possibly rigged up to a parked motorcycle,” the official said adding that an investigation was under way.

Residents in Male said the blast was heard across the capital.

Nasheed became parliament speaker, the Indian Ocean nation’s second most powerful position, following his party’s landslide victory in elections in April 2019.

He became the country’s first democratically elected president after winning the first multi-party elections in 2008. He was toppled in a coup in 2012 and was unable to contest the 2018 presidential elections after he was convicted of criminal charges.

However, he returned to the country from self-imposed exile after his party won the 2018 presidential elections and then entered parliament.

Source: Reuters/AFP

-Agencies