Sri Lanka leader promises inquiry into police shooting
By KRISHAN FRANCIS and BHARATHA MALLAWARACHI
Associated Press
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has pledged “an impartial and transparent inquiry” into a police shooting that left one person dead and 13 others injured during protests over the country’s worst economic crisis in decades. The president said in a tweet on Wednesday he was “deeply saddened” over the incident, which occurred a day earlier in Rambukkana, 56 miles northeast of the capital, Colombo, and urged “all citizens to refrain from violence as they protest.” Protests expanded to other parts of Sri Lanka as people used vehicles to block key roads as they demonstrated against the shooting as well as rising fuel prices and the government’s failure to resolve the deepening economic problems.