A police sergeant was shot and injured last night as he tried to confront an aggressive man in Mosta.

The police said they were called to a house in Triq il-Haġar, Mosta where the 45-year-old man from Valletta was reported to be acting aggressively.

The officers were refused entry and tried to speak to the man in an effort to get him to leave the house. 

He refused orders, and officers of the Rapid Intervention Unit were deployed to the scene.

When the man still refused to leave, the police forced open the door and found him locked in a room.

He warned them that he had turned on the gas and would set off a fire prompting the police to leave the house before a fire did in fact break out.

As soon as it was extinguished, the police moved back in. They broke into the room where the man was locked, whereupon the man opened fire.

The police used a taser gun to restrain him. As a police sergeant struggled with him to get hold of his gun, the man fired again, hitting himself and then the sergeant's leg. 

The man was taken to hospital, where he was found to be be seriously injured, The sergeant was slightly injured.

The police said the man was possibly under the influence of drugs.

A magisterial inquiry is under way.