Colombo—Sri Lanka’s capital was under heavy security on Friday after hundreds of protesters tried to storm the president’s home in a night of violence and anger at a dire economic crisis.
The South Asian nation is seeing severe shortages of essentials, sharp price rises, and crippling power cuts in its most painful downturn since independence in 1948. Many fear it will default on its debts.
Thursday night’s unrest saw hundreds of people, rallied by unidentified social media activists, march on President Gotabaya’s home demanding his resignation.
They set two military buses and a police jeep ablaze, threw bricks to attack officers, and barricaded a main road into Colombo with burning tyres.
One person was critically injured and police said five officers were hurt in running battles. Forty-five people were arrested.
Security forces fired into the crowd and used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the demonstrators. It was not immediately clear if they used live rounds or rubber bullets.
An overnight curfew was lifted early Friday morning, but police and military presence was beefed up around the city, where a burnt-out wreckage of a bus was still blocking the road to Rajapaksa’s house.
Rajapaksa’s office said Friday that the protesters wanted to create an “Arab Spring”—a reference to anti-government protests in response to corruption and economic stagnation that gripped the Middle East over a decade ago.