Anti-government protestors from Sri Lanka invaded the President’s House in Colombo on Saturday, demanding the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, despite several  police and military barriers and tear gas canisters.

Security personnel used water cannons and tear gas to scatter the demonstrators, but they then retreated and started shooting in the air.

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Following violent altercations between the police and the demonstrators, at least 20 people have been taken to the hospital.

There have been efforts to disperse the demonstrators and college students who had camped out overnight outside the President’s House since early on Saturday night.

Although it is still unknown where the President is, it is assumed that he is in the strongly guarded Army headquarters in Battaramulla.

Religious leaders, political parties, doctors, university professors, civil rights activists, farmers, and fishermen have planned a significant people’s protest march from all over the island to Colombo on Saturday, demanding the resignation of President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The Defence Ministry had warned police and soldiers have been given the authority to take action against people indulging in any type of violence, and on Friday night, authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in access regions to Colombo.

Lawyers declared the curfew proclamation to be illegitimate and said that individuals might disregard it.

People have been arriving in Colombo by rail and bus in large numbers since early Saturday, yelling “Go home” and “Gota a mad man.”

People have been demonstrating against President Rajapaksa and his government since March 31 and calling for him to resign as a result of the island nation’s greatest economic crisis since it attained independence in 1948.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, his brother, former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, and numerous other family members who were in the government and parliament resigned in the aftermath of the violent demonstrations.

Without gasoline, all national transportation has been suspended for the past two weeks, and an island in the Indian Ocean is essentially under lockdown.

The 22 million-person island nation has seen its foreign exchange reserves decline as a result of poor economic management and the effects of the Covid-19 epidemic.

As a result it has struggled to pay for imports of essential goods, including fuel, food and medicine.

“In May, it defaulted on its debts for the first time in its history after a 30-day grace period to come up with $78 million of unpaid debt interest payments expired,” added IANS