Updated 12:05 p.m. ET: Supporters of the Maldives former president rioted through the streets and seized some police stations Wednesday to demand his reinstatement as the country's new leader appealed for an end to the political turmoil roiling this Indian Ocean nation.

Allies said former leader Mohamed Nasheed and other top party officials were beaten by police in the street chaos. The nation's first democratically elected president, Nasheed resigned Tuesday after police joined months of street protests against his rule and soldiers defected.

---

Late Wednesday evening, Nasheed supporters seized some small police stations but larger ones stayed under official control, police spokesman Amhed Shyam said. Residents told local reporters that as many as 10 police stations on small islands may have been seized. The Maldives is made up of nearly 1,200 scattered islands, some of which have just a few hundred residents.

Nasheed said Wednesday he was forced to resign at gunpoint and he promised to fight to return to office.

"We will come to power again," Nasheed said. "We will never step back. I will not accept this coup and will bring justice to the Maldivians."

New President Mohammed Waheed Hassan denied claims there was a coup or a plot to oust Nasheed. The former vice president, he said he had not prepared to take over the country and called for a unity coalition to be formed to help it recover.

"Together, I am confident, we'll be able to build a stable and democratic country," he said, adding that his government intended to respect the rule of law.

Later in the day, he appeared to be consolidating his power by appointing a new military chief and police commissioner.

A U.N. team is expected in the country later this week.

Original post: MALE -- The ex-president of the Maldives said on Wednesday that he was forced to resign at gunpoint, despite earlier claims by the Indian Ocean resort islands' new leader that there had been no coup.

"Yes, I was forced to resign at gunpoint," Mohamed Nasheed told reporters after his party meeting a day after his resignation. "There were guns all around me and they told me they wouldn't hesitate to use them if I didn't resign.

The Maldives, one of the world's most high-profile luxury tourist destinations, installed Mohamed Waheed Hassan as president on Tuesday after the man credited with bringing democracy to the islands resigned, apparently under military pressure following a police mutiny. It was not immediately clear who was holding the guns.

"I call on the chief justice to look into the matter of who was behind this coup. We will try our best to bring back the lawful government," said Nasheed, a former pro-democracy political prisoner who campaigned successfully for democratic reforms and was elected to office in 2008.

Just 24 hours after police joined opposition protesters in attacking the military headquarters and seizing the state TV station, the streets of the capital island, Male, were calm as people went to work and children to school.

Trouble in paradise: Maldives president quits after cops mutiny

Former Vice-President Waheed, at his first news conference as president, said he was holding discussions with all Maldivian parties and expected to have nominations for his cabinet ready in a few days.

He denied being part of any plan to remove President Mohamed Nasheed, whose party described his ouster as a coup.

"Do I look like someone who will bring about a coup d'etat?" Waheed asked. "There was no plan. I was not prepared at all."

The political tumult, like most of everyday Maldivian life, was far from the tourists who stream to the chain of desert islands, seeking sun-and-sand paradise at luxury resorts that can command $1,000 a night.  Tourism is estimated to account for two-thirds of the Maldives' gross domestic product of about $1 billion.

Nasheed resigned and was later freed from military custody. Waheed was sworn in by the speaker of the People's Majlis, or parliament.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he hoped the "handover of power, which has been announced as a constitutional step to avoid further violence and instability, will lead to the peaceful resolution of the political crisis that has polarized the country."

Nasheed's order to the military to arrest a judge, whom he accused of blocking multimillion dollar corruption cases against members of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's government, set off three weeks of opposition protests that peaked with Tuesday's police revolt.

'Forced to resign'
In the end, elements of the same military marched him into his own office to order his own resignation, a close aide told Reuters in the first witness account of Nasheed's exit.

"The gates of the president's office swung open and in came these unmarked vehicles we've never seen before and Nasheed came out with around 50 soldiers around him, and senior military men we'd never seen before," said Paul Roberts, Nasheed's communications adviser.

Photos: Soldiers clash with police as Nasheed resigns

Nasheed was brought to his office, met his cabinet, and then went on television to announce his resignation, Roberts said from an undisclosed location.

"He was forced to resign by the military," said Roberts, a 32-year old British citizen. "He could have gone down shooting, but he didn't want blood on his hands. The security forces moved against him."

Amnesty International urged the new government to avoid persecuting people based on political affiliation, amid opposition calls for Nasheed's prosecution and rumors his senior allies would not be allowed to leave the islands.

Although there were some advisories, including from Britain, against travel to Male, most of the Maldives' nearly 1 million annual visitors never reach the capital.

Instead, they are taken straight from the airport island by speedboat or seaplane to their resorts. Flights on Wednesday were arriving as usual.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Group: Militia 'slaughtered' 3 families in Syria's Homs
• Argentina to protest 'militarization' of S. Atlantic
• Strike over Greece austerity measures turns violent
• State Department: We'll 'right-size' embassy in Iraq
• US eyes humanitarian aid for Syria
• Taliban lite? Afghans ponder power-sharing
• Chicken lays really jumbo egg in Colombia

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Updated at 6:16 a.m. ET

MALE, Maldives -- President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives resigned on Tuesday after weeks of protests erupted into a police mutiny, leaving the man widely credited with bringing democracy to the paradise islands accused of being as dictatorial as his predecessor.

Nasheed handed power over the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mohammed Waheed Hassan, who previously worked as a top UNICEF official. He was sworn in as the new Maldivian president in the afternoon.

Maldives, an Indian Ocean archipelago known for luxurious resorts for upmarket tourists, has a new democracy after being under autocratic rule for 30 years. 

---

"I resign because I am not a person who wishes to rule with the use of power," Nasheed said in a televised address. "I believe that if the government were to remain in power it would require the use of force which would harm many citizens.

"I resign because I believe that if the government continues to stay in power, it is very likely that we may face foreign influences."

It was not immediately clear to what influences he was referring. India helped foil a coup on the islands in 1988 by sending a battalion of soldiers to back the government.

A spokesman for India's Foreign Ministry, Syed Akbaruddin, said the rebellion was an internal matter of the Maldives "to be resolved by the Maldives."

• Photos: Soldiers clash with police as Nasheed resigns

In the morning, soldiers fired teargas at police and demonstrators who besieged the Maldives National Defence Force headquarters in Republic Square.

Reuters reported that mutinying police took over the state broadcaster and broadcast an opposition-linked station's calls for people to come on the streets to overthrow Nasheed.

Nasheed, a former pro-democracy political prisoner, campaigned successfully for democratic reforms and was elected to office in 2008 in the country's first multiparty election. He spoke out passionately on the dangers of climate change to the low-lying islands.

The violence on the Indian Ocean archipelago best-known as a beach getaway is the worst in a struggle between Nasheed, widely credited with ushering in full democracy to the archipelago, and former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, whose 30-year rule was widely seen as autocratic.

Constitutional crisis
Protests began weeks ago after Nasheed ordered the military to arrest the top criminal court judge, whom he accuses of being in the pocket of the former president.

That set off a constitutional crisis that has Nasheed in the unaccustomed position of defending himself of acting like a dictator.

Gayoom's opposition Progressive Party of the Maldives accused the military of firing rubber bullets at protesters and a party spokesman, Mohamed Hussain "Mundhu" Shareef, said "loads of people" were injured. He gave no specifics.

An official close to Nasheed denied the government had used rubber bullets, but confirmed that about three dozen police officers defied orders overnight and smashed up the main rallying point of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party.

"This follows Gayoom's party calling for the overthrow of the Maldives' first democratically elected government and for citizens to launch jihad against the president," said the official.

The protests, and the scramble for position ahead of next year's presidential election, have seen parties adopting hardline Islamist rhetoric and accusing Nasheed of being anti-Islamic.

On Twitter, opposition-linked groups or individuals have called for Nasheed's impeachment and, in at least one case, beheading under Shariah law.

The trouble has also shown the longstanding rivalry between Gayoom and Nasheed, who was jailed for a combined six years after being arrested 27 times by Gayoom's government while agitating for democracy.

The trouble has been largely invisible to the 900,000 or so well-heeled tourists who come very year to visit desert islands swathed in aquamarine seas, ringed by beaches of icing-sugar sands, would get a hint of that.

'Potentially a tropical Afghanistan'
Most tourists are whisked straight to their island hideaway by seaplane or speedboat, where they are free to drink alcohol and get luxurious spa treatments, insulated from the everyday Maldives, a fully Islamic state where alcohol is outlawed and skimpy beachwear frowned upon.

Maldivian intelligence officers and Western officials say hardline Salafist and Wahabist groups are gaining political ground in the more distant atolls and making a beachhead in Male.

The capital island is home to almost 200,000 of the Maldives' 330,000 people, all Sunni Muslims. It is also home to the majority of the estimated 30,000 people on the islands who are addicted to heroin, according to U.N. estimates.

"It's potentially a tropical Afghanistan. The same forces that gave rise to the Taliban are there -- the drugs, the corruption and the behavior of the political class," a Colombo-based Western ambassador who is responsible for the Maldives told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A ban on luxury spas at hotels and massage parlors in the Maldives was lifted Wednesday -- a week after it was imposed as part of an effort to curb perceived vice -- following pressure from the country's key tourism industry.

"We have lifted the ban and all the services will be available for tourists," President Nasheed told Reuters by telephone from the Maldives capital Male. "We wanted to give confidence to tourists."

---

Nasheed said he ordered the ban in response to calls by the main opposition party, which claimed the spas and parlors were fronts for prostitution and led to the spread of drugs and alcohol to locals in the mainly Sunni Muslim nation of more than 1,200 atolls home to a population of 400,000.

But former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said the Progressive Party of the Maldives had not asked for the ban. He claimed it was really aimed at leisure businesses owned by some opposition members.

The ban badly affected the tourism industry in the Indian Ocean island nation where pristine white sand beaches and turquoise waters attract more than 800,000 tourists annually, including honeymooners and celebrities from around the world.

Call to ban Israel flights
The country's Supreme Court is due to make decision on whether they spas and parlors violate Islam.

Protesters have also demanded that authorities halt the sale of alcohol on islands inhabited by local people, stop plans to allow direct flights from Israel, and demolish statues given by other countries to commemorate a South Asian summit in November which they saw as idols.

"To be racist in any way is detrimental to the tourism industry," Nasheed said of the call to halt Israeli flights. "This is not the way to go forward."

Debates on religious issues have intensified since a group vandalized a statue given by Pakistan bearing the image of Buddha. In November a protest followed a call by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, for the Maldives to end the flogging of women found to have had sex outside marriage.

Nasheed has said he stands for a brand of moderate Islam traditionally practiced in the country and that it is vital to preserve tourism.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.