Belgrade, 15 March 2025 (dpa/MIA) - Large crowds were gathering in the centre of Belgrade on Saturday morning ahead of a planned mass rally against the Serbian government.

Thousands of students arrived in the capital on Friday evening after making their way on foot from all over the country.

They plan to take part in a demonstration on Saturday to mark an accident in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad on November 1, in which a railway station canopy collapsed and 15 people were killed.

The disaster triggered a major wave of protest about government corruption in which students are playing a central role.

The participants in the protests blame corruption in the government of the increasingly authoritarian President Aleksandar Vučić for the disaster in Novi Sad, pointing out that the station had just been rebuilt.

The protesters are not calling for the resignation of politicians, but rather for the consistent enforcement of the rule of law and the punishment of anyone found to have acted corruptly.

A dpa journalist reported a cheerful mood at the students' reception in central Belgrade on Friday night.

Large groups of young people had covered considerable distances, some of them walking for several days, for example from Kragujevac in central Serbia, a distance of 140 kilometres, or from the northern border town of Subotica, 190km from the capital.

Thousands of people lined the streets, applauding and shouting "Pumpaj!" - a slogan of the protest movement that roughly translates as "Turn up the heat!"

Saturday's demonstration is expected to be one of the largest in the country's history.

Photo: epa