Sri Lanka crisis: Protesters set PM Ranil Wickremesinghe's house on fire

In videos, the angry protesters could be seen damaging vehicles belonging to the Prime Minister.

"Protesters have broken into the private residence of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and have set it on fire," the Lankan Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Saturday evening.

Wickremesinghe, who was appointed as Prime Minister in May, has announced that he will resign from his post in order to ensure the continuation of the government and the safety of all the citizens.

"To ensure the continuation of the Government including the safety of all citizens I accept the best recommendation of the Party Leaders today, to make way for an All-Party Government. To facilitate this I will resign as Prime Minister," he tweeted after an emergency cabinet meeting.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had summoned the urgent cabinet meeting to discuss a "swift resolution" to a potential power vacuum that was created after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence Saturday following protests.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence Saturday as thousands of anti-government protesters stormed into his residence demanding his resignation.

Amid the chaos and protests, a video has emerged of suitcases being loaded on a Sri Lanka Navy ship. According to local media, these suitcases belong to President Rajapaksa.

Visuals show three men carrying large suitcases onto the ship SLNS Gajabahu. The three men seem to be in a hurry as they can be seen running in the video.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa stormed the President's House here on Saturday after overcoming stiff resistance put up by security forces, leaving an unspecified number of people injured.

The protesters, mostly young and male, some of them waving Sri Lankan flags, broke the police barricades on Chatham Street in Colombo's Fort area and entered the President's House where Rajapaksa was not present, journalists at the site said.

Police used tear gas and water cannons and also opened fire in the air in a desperate bid to scatter the mass gathering but could not prevent the protesters from entering the President's House.

Some demonstrators scaled the boundary walls while others poured in through the main gate. They then briskly walked into the normally heavily-fortified house, all the time shouting anti-government slogans.

Saturday's action came a month after mass protests forced Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to quit and take shelter in a military camp in the eastern port city of Trincomalee.

The Rajapaksa brothers -- part of a large clan -- are widely blamed for Sri Lanka's worst economic crisis.

The nation of 22 million people is struggling under a severe foreign exchange shortage that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine, plunging the country into the worst economic crisis in decades.