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Boyscout saves Gayoom from assassination

AFP, Colombo
The president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, escaped an assassination attempt yesterday while on a tour of the Indian Ocean archipelago, a senior minister told AFP.
Officials said a 20-year-old unemployed man tried to plunge a knife into Gayoom's stomach, but that Asia's longest serving president was unhurt thanks to a boy scout who wrestled with the attacker before he was detained.
"The president was greeting people when a young boy pulled out a knife and tried to stab him in the stomach," Information Minister Mohamed Nasheed said by telephone from the island capital of Male.
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The attack took place on I loarafushi in the north of tne Maldives, a chain of 1.192 coral and white sand islands offthcsouthemtipoflndia.
The attacker - identified as 20-year-old Mohamed Murshid, who was unemployed and who had no previous criminal record - had hidden the knife wrapped in a national flag, the president's spokesman Monamed Hussain Shareef said.
"He was an idling youth," he said.
Assistant Police Commissioner Abdulla Riyaz told AFP said invest! gators were trying to establish a motive for the attack
"It's still at a very, very early stage, we are questioning him. Investigations are still going on. It is too early to say if he has links to any Islamic militant groups."
Gayoom was saved as 15-year-old boy scout Mohamed Jaisham grabbed the attacker as he tried to stab the president, Shareef said. Jaisham's nand was injured and he was being treated in the island's health centre.
Gayoom said in a nationwide address after the attack that he had survived "thanks to Mohamed Jaisham and Allah."
The Maldives, a top destination for well-heeled tourists and honeymooners. has been tense since a September bomb attack in the capital Male injured 12 foreign tourists.
Authorities blamed the bombing on Islamic extremists seeking to wreck the country's vital tourism industry, which accounts for a third of the nation's economy.
Three men cohvicted of carrying out the bombing -- the holiday archipelago's first ever terror attack - were last month each jailed for 15 years.
Police are also looking out for foreign militant groups after press reports said some of the suspects had links to a Muslim separatist group fighting Indian rule over pan of the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Gayoom, who has ruled the islands since 1978, responded to the bombing by ordering a tough crackdown on what he considers to be Islamic extremism.
The measures include bans on women wearing the full veil and foreign preachers as well as unlicensed Muslim prayer groups.
In a recent interview with AFP Gayoom said the bomb attack targeting foreign tourists followed by violent clashes with police and security forces had alerted the country to the "very serious threat of extremism."