2 million people expected in the next 10 days
A few tens of thousands of pilgrims have crowded today in Sri Lanka in the Buddhist temple of Kandi, the most important in the country, on the first day of the exhibition of a famous relic attributed to Buddha.
The tooth, which would be a right canine of Buddha, is exhibited for the first time after sixteen years and will remain visible until April 27. At least ten thousand police officers were sent to the city, in the center of the island, to protect the temple, which in 1998 underwent a terrorist attack by the Tamil tigers, which ended with a balance of 16 deaths.
The authorities provide that at least two million faithful will arrive in Kandi in the next ten days, while in 2009, the year of the last exposure, one million was counted. The schools were closed throughout the region, to accommodate the military sent to strengthen the security forces. From the early hours of the morning, the line of people waiting to be admitted to the temple was kilometers long.
Kandy, who is 112 112 kilometers north-east of the capital Colombo, belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
