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Muslim Voters Attacked as Sri Lanka Elects President

Associated Press

   COLOMBO, SRI LANKA - Muslim voters traveling by bus to polling stations
   in northern Sri Lanka were attacked by gunfire and stones and blocked
   by burning tires hours before polls opened in presidential elections
   Saturday, in what a member of the Elections Commission called a
   coordinated effort to disenfranchise the minority group.

   There were no reported injuries and police were investigating, said
   Manjula Gajanayake, spokesman for the Colombo-based Centre for
   Monitoring Election Violence.

   Campaigning for Sri Lanka's seventh presidential election was dominated
   by worries over national security in the backdrop of the deadly Islamic
   State-inspired suicide bomb attacks on Easter that killed 269 people.
   At the same time, there's fear among both Tamils and Muslims about a
   return to power of front-runner Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a hard-line former
   defense official under his brother, ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

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