Mosque attacked in anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan police said petrol bombs were hurled at a mosque on Thursday as hundreds of troops patrolled a troubled central district where antiMuslim violence has left three people dead.
Muslim-owned businesses were set on fire and vandalised in several parts of Sri Lanka, police said, days after an island-wide state of emergency was imposed to curb riots in Kandy.
Armoured vehicles and heavily-armed troops fortified the hill district, where internet services remain suspended and an evening curfew is in place.
The government ordered the internet blackout after police discovered mobs of Sinhalese rioters were using social media to coordinate attacks on Muslim establishments.
More than 200 homes, businesses and vehicles have been torched in three days of violence by mobs from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority.
President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday replaced Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister amidst the fresh violence.
Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe’s United National Party was sworn in this morning as the new minister.
Wickremesinghe’s 11-day tenure as the law and order minister was marred by racial tension in the central district of Kandy since Monday. AGENCIES