Clashes erupted between groups of protesters and riot police after a huge anti-government rally on Saturday in the Serbian capital Belgrade attended by tens of thousands of opponents of the country’s autocratic President Aleksandar Vucic.
While the rally at a central square in Belgrade passed largely peacefully, groups of young demonstrators later split and clashed with riot police after the main gathering, throwing flares, rocks and bottles at police cordons, who responded with pepper spray as they charged forward to disperse them.
The demonstrators rolled trash cannisters to the streets as shield-carrying riot police tried to surround them. Police parked anti-riot vehicles in a central Belgrade area to block the demonstrators from returning.
Darko Vojinovic/AP
Protesters earlier on Saturday streamed into central Belgrade, many carrying banners and wearing T-shirts inscribed with the “Students win” motto of the youth movement. Columns of cars drove into Belgrade from other Serbian towns earlier in the day.
Vucic has sought to curb student-led mass demonstrations that have shaken his hard-line rule in the Balkan country.
Protester Maja Milas Markovic said students “managed to gather us here with their youth and wonderful energy; I really believe that we have [the] right to live normally.”
Armin Durgut/AP 
The students led a nationwide wave of mass anti-corruption street protests demanding accountability for a train station tragedy in Serbia’s north in November 2024 that killed 16 people. Those protests forced then-Prime Minister Milos Vucevic to resign before authorities pushed back hard against the protesters.
The students on Saturday reiterated their demand for an early parliamentary election and the rule of law, accusing the government of crime and corruption.