Sri Lanka protesters storm prime minister's office as state of emergency declared
Sri Lankan protesters breached the walls of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office in the capital Colombo on Wednesday as the government declared a state of emergency.
Hundreds of protesters, marching right past rows of riot police, surrounded prime minister's office at around noon, demanding his immediate resignation.
Riot police fired several rounds of tear gas as protesters climbed over the compound’s fences.
"The prime minister as acting president has declared a state of emergency (countrywide) and imposed a curfew in the western province," Wickremesinghe's media secretary, Dinouk Colombage, told Reuters. Western Province includes Colombo.
Protests against the economic crisis have simmered for months and came to a head last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over key government buildings in Colombo, blaming the Rajapaksas and their allies for runaway inflation, corruption and a severe lack of fuel and medicines.
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday, hours before he was due to step down.
Rajapaksa has authorized the prime minister to carry out presidential duties, the speaker of parliament said on Wednesday after the president fled to the Maldives amid protests.
Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said Rajapaksa had approved Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acting as president, invoking a section of the constitution dealing with times when the president is unable to fulfil his duties.
Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday, hours before he was due to step down after a people's uprising over a devastating economic crisis ended his family's grip on the island nation.
The president's flight brings an end to the rule of the powerful Rajapaksa clan that has dominated politics in the South Asian country for the last two decades.
