Sri Lanka protesters, angered by economic meltdown, storm president's house

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Sri Lanka protesters, angered by economic meltdown, storm president's house
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Thousands of protesters in Sri Lanka's commercial capital Colombo stormed the president's official residence and his secretariat on Saturday amid months of mounting public anger over the country's worst economic crisis in seven decades.

The island of 22 million people is struggling under a severe foreign exchange shortage that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine, plunging it into the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.

Political instability could undermine Sri Lanka's talks with the International Monetary Fund seeking a $3 billion bailout, a restructuring of some foreign debt and fund-raising from multilateral and bilateral sources to ease the dollar drought. However, many blame the country's decline on economic mismanagement by President Rajapaksa. Largely peaceful protests since March have demanded his resignation.

Police fired shots in the air but were unable to stop the angry crowd from surrounding the presidential residence, the witness said.Despite a severe shortage of fuel that has stalled transportation services, demonstrators packed into buses, trains and trucks from several parts of the country to reach Colombo to protest the government's failure to protect them from economic ruin.

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