Officials said the men attacked the figures because they believed they were idols and illegal under Islamic and national laws.
There were contradictory reports about whether suspects had been arrested. Ali Waheed, director of the National Museum, said five men were caught at the museum, but a spokesman for the police, Ahmed Shiyam, said yesterday that investigators were still collecting evidence and had not made arrests.
The Feb. 7 attack is reminiscent of the Taliban’s demolition of the great Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in early 2001 and has raised fears here that extremists are gaining ground in the Maldives, a Sunni Muslim country that is believed to have converted to Islam in the 12th century from Buddhism.
The country has long incorporated elements of Islamic laws in its jurisprudence. Alcohol, pork products, and idols cannot be brought into the country.
On the same day that the statues were destroyed, Mohamed Nasheed, who was elected president in 2008 in the country’s first democratic election, stepped down in what he said was a coup and what his opponents argue was a voluntary resignation.
Nasheed’s vice president, Mohammed Waheed Hassan, succeeded him; the United Nations on yesterday backed the leader’s proposal for a national unity government.
However, Nasheed has called for civil disobedience if Hassan does not call an early election to resolve the crisis.
Nasheed’s resignation came after nearly a monthlong protest by Islamic and other opposition political parties, some of whom criticized him for not cracking down on massage parlors that operated as brothels and for proposing that hotels on islands inhabited by Maldivians be allowed to serve alcohol.
Currently, only hotels on islands where no Maldivians live or at the airport are allowed to serve alcohol.
Ali Waheed said yesterday that officials might be able to restore two or three of the statues but the rest were beyond repair. “The whole pre-Islamic history is gone,’’ he said.
Naseema Mohamed, a historian who retired from the museum last year, said the loss was particularly devastating because many of the country’s ancient artifacts dispersed across the archipelago had been lost or destroyed over the years by locals and rulers.
