Tens of thousands of students in Serbia are demanding accountability, in the latest wave of anti-government protests over a train station roof collapse that killed 15 people in Novi Sad last November. The disaster fueled outrage over corruption, which morphed into a nationwide student-led movement, as Al Jazeera’s Katarina Vojnovic explains.
Thousands of Serbians blocked the main boulevard of the central city Kragujevac, the latest in a series of student-led protests over last November’s deadly collapse of a train station roof.
The increasing pressure being applied by the university student-led movement has already forced the resignation of several high-ranking officials, including Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, at the end of January.
Crowds gathered in the city centre at the start of Serbia’s statehood holiday, calling for greater government accountability and reforms.
Protesters filled the streets well into the afternoon on Saturday, waving flags marked with bloody handprints – the protests’ logo.
The Kragujevac blockade is the third daylong city demonstration after Belgrade and Novi Sad a few weeks ago.
The collapse of the station roof in Novi Sad in November last year, which killed 15 people, followed extensive renovations to the building in the northern city.
The deaths fuelled longstanding anger over corruption and demands for accountability.
At 10:52 GMT, the time of the tragedy, protesters observed 15 minutes of silence to honour the victims.
The blockade was planned to last past midnight, marking the anniversary of the enactment of the Serbian Constitution in 1835, making it one of the most progressive in Europe at the time.
President Aleksandar Vucic, at a rally in the northern town of Sremska Mitrovica, told thousands of supporters the country was being attacked from the outside, “helped by many inside who manipulate our children”.
He urged the protesters to engage in dialogue and to listen to him.
“Declare victory, you have had all your demands met, return to your benches,” he said.
The government has already tried to meet some of the students’ demands in a bid to quell the months-long protests.
The students in Kragujevac however are continuing to call for greater transparency.
Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have entered Bukavu, the second-largest city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), after advancing rapidly in the country.
A local official, a security source, and five witnesses reported seeing the rebels there on Sunday, while a spokesperson for the militia told the Reuters news agency: “We are there.”
The armed group had been advancing on the capital of South Kivu province since seizing the city of Goma in late January. The fall of Bukavu, if confirmed, would represent the most significant expansion of territory under the M23’s control since the latest armed rebellion started in 2022.
M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma said in a telephone message that the group was in the city.
The Congolese army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I’m at home, and I can see with my own eyes the M23 entering our town,” a local official said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Claude Bisimwa, a Bukavu resident, was transporting the bodies of two slain men who were hit by bullets “inside … their house”.
“They were in their room. We are taking their bodies to the morgue. These were not stray bullets – the soldier did this out of his own will,” Bisimwa told Al Jazeera.
As panic swept through the city, there were reports of widespread looting, including at a World Food Programme depot, while thousands of civilians fled.
A day earlier, the rebels took control of Kavumu airport serving Bukavu. They reportedly faced minimal resistance as they advanced through the town.
The airport was the last significant military barrier for the rebel forces before reaching Bukavu, a city of more than one million people.
The development comes as the African Union (AU) summit continues in Ethiopia. The conflict in the DRC has been a key topic of discussion at the annual two-day meeting.
Addressing the summit, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said a “regional escalation must be avoided at all costs” and the DRC’s “territorial integrity” must be preserved.
The AU has been criticised for its timid approach, and observers have demanded more decisive action towards the conflict.
Israeli forces and settlers have continued with their raids and attacks on civilians in various parts of the occupied West Bank, with at least five attacks on Saturday and overnight.
Here is a breakdown of the situation:
A stampede at a railway station in New Delhi, India has killed at least 18 people and injured dozens more. Thousands of passengers had gathered to board trains to the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious gathering in the world.
The Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has stepped up its attacks on the Zamzam refugee camp near el-Fasher, capital of the North Darfur state.
On Friday, residents and medics said the RSF attacked the camp, which it surrounded three times within a week.
At least seven people were killed in the camp this week, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said, adding that medics were unable to perform surgeries in Zamzam.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general, said the renewed fighting included the use of heavy weapons and urged the warring parties to stop the violence.
The RSF is said to be trying to tighten its grip on its Darfur stronghold, losing ground to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the capital, Khartoum.
Nearly 22 months since the war erupted in Sudan between the RSF and the SAF, the paramilitary group still controls most of Darfur in Sudan’s west and much of the neighbouring Kordofan region.
The army controls Sudan’s north and east and has recently made crucial gains in Khartoum.
Zamzam houses 500,000 people displaced by fighting in this and past wars in Darfur, while nearby el-Fasher is home to 1.8 million people and is the last significant holdout against the RSF across Darfur.
The RSF has been besieging the area for months, claiming that the camp is a base for the Joint Forces, former rebel groups now fighting alongside the army.
Some camp residents have burrowed holes into the ground for shelter and protection, fearing constant attacks, according to one resident and a video shared by activists.
“Inside the neighbourhoods, they terrorise, steal, and kill … people hide in these holes when they are firing and when they are raiding, because there is nowhere else to flee,” a resident of the camp told the Reuters news agency.
The top UN humanitarian official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said on Thursday she was “shocked by the attacks on Zamzam IDP camp and the blockages of escape routes”.
The RSF has also restricted aid efforts to the camp, according to the UN and aid workers.
In August, a UN-backed report found that it is plausible that parts of North Darfur – especially the Zamzam camp – are experiencing “the worst form of hunger”, known as IPC Phase 5.
IPC Phase 5 is a step in an internationally recognised Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which indicates that at least one in five people or households severely lack food and face starvation and destitution, which would ultimately lead to critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.
After the latest violence, MSF said it had to stop a nutrition programme for 6,000 malnourished children.
Earlier this month, the group had announced that the proportion of the camp’s children who were malnourished had risen to 34 percent, a similar level to the nearby town of Tawila, to which many have fled from RSF attacks.
Speaking on Friday at a high-level humanitarian conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation in Sudan as a catastrophe on a “staggering scale and brutality”.