Video footage showed the entire house of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his younger brother and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Medamulana in Hambantota city was burning away as protestors hooted away, the Daily Mirror reported.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa quit on Monday, as an outbreak of political violence killed five people including an MP and wounded almost 200.
Lawmaker Amarakeerthi Athukorala from the ruling party shot two people — killing a 27-year-old man — and then took his own life after being surrounded by a mob of anti-government protesters outside Colombo, police said.
And another ruling-party politician who was not named opened fire on anti-government protesters in the southern town of Weeraketiya, killing two and wounding five, according to police.
Sri Lanka has suffered months of blackouts and dire shortages of food, fuel and medicines in its worst economic crisis since independence.
This sparked weeks of overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as well as his brother the prime minister.
On Monday scores of Rajapaksa loyalists attacked unarmed protesters camping outside the president’s office on a seafront promenade in downtown Colombo, AFP reporters said.
“We were hit, the media were hit, women and children were hit,” one witness said, asking not to be named.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon and declared an immediate curfew in Colombo, which was later widened to include the entire South Asian island nation of 22 million people.
A total of 181 people were hospitalised, a Colombo National Hospital spokesman told AFP. Eight were injured elsewhere.