Before demonstrators assembled to call for his resignation entered the property, Sri Lanka’s troubled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa left his official residence in Colombo on Saturday, a top defence source told AFP.
The source claimed that the president was evacuated to safety and that soldiers had fired shots into the air to keep mobs of enraged people from storming the President’s Palace.
Private station Sirasa TV showed hundreds entering the hitherto heavily guarded home.
After running out of foreign cash to import essential products, Sri Lanka has endured months of food and fuel shortages, protracted blackouts, and escalating inflation.
The march, the most recent manifestation of dissatisfaction brought on by the island nation’s unparalleled economic crisis, drew sizable crowds into the capital.
After threats to sue the police chief from opposition parties, rights advocates, and the bar association, police withdrew a curfew order that had been issued on Friday.
According to officials, thousands of anti-government protestors disobeyed the directive to stay at home and even compelled railroad authorities to run trains to transport them to Colombo for the event on Saturday.
Video shown on Sri Lankan television depicted demonstrators smashing through police-erected security barriers to access President’s House, Rajapaksa’s office and residence in the nation’s commercial city.
