NEW DELHI, July 9. /TASS/. The number of those injured in clashes in Sri Lanka has risen to 45 people, including seven law enforcement officers, India’s The Print online newspaper said on Saturday.

Most of them were injured in clashes between police and protesters who stormed the residences of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Colombo, demanding resignation of sitting head of state. They stormed his residence and then the prime minister’s residence. The Rajapaksa would step down on July 13, the NewsWire news aggregator said on Saturday citing Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena. According to NewsWire, Rajapaksa has informed the speaker about his decision.

As Wickremesinghe told TASS in an exclusive interview this week, the country is hit hard by the worst crisis in modern history, and the island nation’s politicians cannot yet find parallels to such a crisis in this century or in the last century or the century before. According to the prime minister, the country is currently in the middle of the crisis.

Wickremesinghe pointed out that Sri Lanka was facing severe shortages of foreign currencies, fuel and petroleum products, fertilizers, food for some groups of the population, and medicines. According to his estimates, it will take three years or more to recover from the economic crisis.