A teeming mass of Sri Lankans has gained access into the nation’s presidential villa according to reports. Protesters breached the entrance to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka and at the GotaGoGama agitation site in Galle Face today demanding his immediate resignation from office.
However, unrelenting efforts from the thousands of protestors to gain access forced the police to withdraw from the scene according to some witness accounts. Many people have been injured and several others hospitalised as a result. Nobody knows where the president is at the moment.
The protest comes amidst a national economic collapse that many experts has rightly called. The breach of the presidential villa is one of the largest anti-government marches in the crisis-hit country this year.
Some protesters, holding Sri Lankan flags and helmets, broke into the president’s residence, video footage from local TV news NewsFirst channel showed. Others went for a little swim inside the Presidential villa.
Reports say that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa may have been moved from the official premises on Friday ahead of the rally today.
The island of 22 million people is struggling under a severe foreign exchange shortage that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine, plunging it into the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.
A lot of the blame has been placed on the President with past successive protests demanding his resignation.
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