4 dead in poll violence, including president's advisor

Oct 8, 2011, 17:24 GMT

Colombo - The final phase of local elections in Sri Lanka ended on Saturday with a shooting incident that left a presidential advisor and three others dead and 12 injured, including a member of parliament, officials said.

The clash - in which Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, the presidential advisor on trade union affairs, was among those killed - occurred in Kolonnawua, 14 kilometres south-east of the capital, as polling closed late Saturday.

Parliamentarian Duminda Silva was in a critical condition after receiving three bullets to the head, hospital sources said.

A curfew was imposed in the area where the incident took place, after mobs set fire to a police vehicle soon after the shoot-out between supporters of Premachandra and Silva, who are both from the ruling party.

Some 1.5 million voters were registered for the polls in 23 local councils. The turnout was around 60 per cent.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) party won more than two-thirds of the 300 local councils in elections held in the first phases in March and July.

The ruling party's popularity has been high since the defeat of the separatist Tamil rebels in May 2009, ending a 26-year war.

But the party failed to win a majority of local councils in the Tamil-dominated northern region that experienced the brunt of the ethnic conflict.

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