Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who spearheaded the brutal crushing of Tamil Tigers a decade ago, stormed to power Sunday but promised to be a president for all Sri Lanka's races and religions after a divisive election.

Seven months after Islamist extremist attacks that killed 269 people, Rajapaksa was elected on Saturday on the back of a nationalist campaign promising security and to crush religious extremism in the Buddhist-majority country.

However, Rajapaksa's triumph will alarm Sri Lanka's Tamil and Muslim minorities as well as activists, journalists and possibly some in the international community following the 2005-15 presidency of his older brother Mahinda Rajapaksa.

On Sunday Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 70, thanked all voters in an election that heightened ethnic and religious tensions in a country that only a decade ago emerged from a brutal civil war that cost 100,000 lives.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019