Colombo: Hundreds of protesters demanding the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Saturday stormed the President’s House here after overcoming staff resistance put up by security forces, leaving an unspecified number of people injured.
The mainly male and young protesters, some of them waving Sri Lankan flags, broke the police barricades on Chatham Street in Colombo’s Fort area and entered the President’s House but Rajapaksa was not in, journalists at the site said.
Police used tear gas and water cannons and also opened fire in the air in a desperate bid to scatter the mass gathering but could not prevent the protesters from entering the President’s House.
Some demonstrators scaled the boundary walls while others poured in through the main gate. They then briskly walked into the normally heavily-fortified house, all the time shouting anti-government slogans.
The President’s whereabouts were unknown, the Daily Mirror and other newspapers reported.
Saturday’s action came a month after mass protests forced Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to quit and take shelter in a military camp in the eastern port city of Trincomalee.
The Rajapaksa brothers — part of a large clan — are widely blamed for Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis.
