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Lanka crisis
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Sri Lanka crisis: Video emerges showing suitcases being loaded on navy ship as President Rajapaksa flees

| @indiablooms | Jul 10, 2022, at 02:33 am

Colombo/IBNS: Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence Saturday as thousands of anti-government protesters stormed into his residence demanding his resignation.

Amid the chaos and protests, a video has emerged of suitcases being loaded on a Sri Lanka Navy ship. According to local media, these suitcases belong to President Rajapaksa.

Visuals show three men carrying large suitcases onto the ship SLNS Gajabahu. The three men seem to be in a hurry as they can be seen running in the video.

  Lmao people actually made the president pack his suitcase and run for his life😂😂

"The Harbour Master at the Colombo Port said that a group boarded the SLNS Sindurala and SLNS Gajabahu and left the port,” News1 Channel reported.

He said he cannot provide details of the manifest or about those who boarded the vessels, the channel said.

Meanwhile, the office of Sri Lanka's Prime Minister in a statement on Saturday said Ranil Wickremesinghe has agreed to step down following demands by party leaders in Parliament, Khaleej Times reported.

Earlier in the day Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had summoned an urgent cabinet meeting to discuss a "swift resolution" to a potential power vacuum that was created after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence Saturday following protests.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa stormed the President's House here on Saturday after overcoming stiff resistance put up by security forces, leaving an unspecified number of people injured.

The protesters, mostly young and male, 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 where Rajapaksa was not present, 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.

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.

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