The attacks, led by the increasingly bold Sinhala-Buddhist mobs, have drawn comparisons with the start of the country’s decades-long civil war in 1983.
As the fourth night of a military imposed curfew fell, minority Muslims told The Independent they were apprehensive about the possibility of an escalation in violence following Friday prayers, with dozens of Muslim-owned houses, businesses and vehicles now burnt down.
Fresh tensions erupted in riot-torn Kandy when Sinhalese mobs took to the streets, defying the curfew, on Wednesday night. A Buddhist man was killed in an explosion, authorities said, when a grenade he was carrying detonated prematurely.
So far three people have died, including one Muslim youth who lost his life after being trapped in a house set on fire by mobs.
The riots started on Monday after a 41-year-old Sinhalese man died following a clash between some youths in Digana village, five miles from Kandy.
The incident, a personal scuffle, was stoked into racial riots by “outside elements”, say government ministers, and the Sinhalese community at large.
“This situation has been created by outsiders. It’s a conspiracy,” said Lakshman Kiriella, a Kandy District parliamentarian. “We should be ashamed as a majority Buddhist nation to be persecuting innocent Muslims in this country,” he told parliament.
Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara insisted the situation was under control. The government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said that “the army has been deployed in ten and thousands” to the hill country.
But despite such reassurances from police and military, residents in and around Kandy fear that Friday, when the Muslim men gather in congregation at mosques for midday prayers, could bring more attacks.
Victims and eyewitnesses have made allegations that the country’s elite Special Task Force (STF) and the army, called in to quell the riots on Monday, did not move to prevent the mobs from their rampage, looting, burning and pillaging of homes and businesses.
In Welikada, five miles from Kandy, where several houses and shops were burnt down and the mosque attacked, victims say the STF did nothing to stop the violence.
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