The Sri Lankan government has ordered an investigation into the vandalisation of some statues, including that of Mahatma Gandhi, in Batticaloa town.
"It has been brought to (our) notice that several important statues in Batticaloa town had been vandalised," Xinhua quoted the foreign ministry as saying on Saturday.
It said the inspector general of police had been asked to carry out "an immediate and thorough investigation" into the incidents to identify the culprits.
According to police, the attackers broke off the heads of the statues of Gandhi and Britain's Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement.
Two other statues of local figures were also vandalised on Thursday in what appeared to be a coordinated crime, police said.
Batticaloa is an overwhelmingly Tamil majority town in eastern Sri Lanka. A Mahatma Gandhi statue also exists in Jaffna.