Hundreds of thousands of people descended on Serbia's capital on Saturday to protest over the deaths of 15 people in a railway station collapse.

While the government put attendance at 107,000 across Belgrade, an independent monitor said 325,000 - if not more - had gathered, making it Serbia's largest protest ever.

The Novi Sad collapse last November has galvanised anger towards the government and President Aleksandar Vucic. Demonstrators blame corruption and corner-cutting for the loss of life.

Hundreds of thousands of people descended on Serbia's capital on Saturday to protest over the deaths of 15 people in a railway station collapse.

While the government put attendance at 107,000 across Belgrade, an independent monitor said 325,000 - if not more - had gathered, making it Serbia's largest protest ever.

The Novi Sad collapse last November has galvanised anger towards the government and President Aleksandar Vucic. Demonstrators blame corruption and corner-cutting for the loss of life.

Serbian opposition lawmakers threw smoke grenades and used pepper spray inside parliament on Tuesday to protest against the government and to support demonstrating students, with one legislator suffering a stroke during the chaos.

Four months of student-led demonstrations, sparked by the deaths of 15 people when a railway station roof collapsed, have drawn in teachers, farmers and others to become the biggest threat yet to President Aleksandar Vucic's decade-long rule, with many denouncing rampant corruption and incompetence in government.

Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned on Tuesday following months of anti-government protests. The demonstrations were sparked by the collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, which resulted in the tragic deaths of 15 people. After submitting his resignation, Vučević expressed hope that his departure would ease tensions and pave the way for renewed dialogue between the government and protesters.

For 25 years, a busy junction at the centre of the Serbian capital of Belgrade has been dominated by the blackened shell of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defence. It has been deliberately left as it was after Nato bombs destroyed it in 1999 during the Kosovo war.

Yet now this shrine to Serbian nationalism is set to be torn down and redeveloped into a glitzy hotel and apartment complex. The investors are from, of all places, America — Belgrade’s old adversary, which twice in the 1990s led military interventions by Nato to thwart Serbian aggression in the region.

President Xi Jinping vowed to “never forget” NATO’s deadly bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, during a European trip that’s amplifying fissures in the region’s support for the US.

“Twenty-five years ago today, NATO flagrantly bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists,” Xi said, in a Tuesday article published in Politika, Serbia’s oldest daily newspaper. “That we should never forget,” he added. “We will never allow such tragic history to repeat itself.”

HBO has cut ties with pro-Russian actor Milos Bikovic after he was initially hired to co-star in Season 3 of its hit series “The White Lotus.”

“We have decided to part ways with Miloš Biković and the role will be recast,” an HBO spokesperson said in a terse announcement.

Bikovic, 36, a Serbian actor, was awarded Russian citizenship in 2021 and has starred in several Russian films, including “Sunstroke” (2014).

Thousands gathered in a square in in central Belgrade on Saturday in the biggest protest yet over parliamentary and municipal elections on Dec. 17, results of which the demonstrators want anulled.

Protesters waving Serbian flags and holding a banner reading "We do not accept" cheered Marinika Tepic, a leader of the opposition Serbia Against Violence alliance, who has been on hunger strike since Dec. 18.

Fishing in Serbia’s troubled waters after a contested general election, Russia on Monday accused the West of orchestrating anti-government street protests in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, that flared into violence on Sunday evening.

Claims of a Western plot by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Harchenko, were the latest efforts by Moscow to thwart a so far mostly fruitless diplomatic campaign by the United States and Europe to lure Serbia out of Russia’s orbit and break traditionally strong ties between the two Slavic and Orthodox Christian nations.

Several thousand people gathered in front of the central election commission building in Belgrade on Monday to protest over an election earlier this month that international monitors said was unfair.

The protesters marched to the main police station where they believed those detained by police were being held.

Earlier in the day, police said 38 people had been detained during and after an opposition protest over election results on Sunday. The police said eight policemen were injured in clashes.