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BELGRADE: Thousands of anti-government protesters returned to the streets in Serbia on Thursday after two days of clashes with loyalists of autocratic President Aleksandar Vucic and riot police that left dozens injured or detained. Police fired tear gas in the country’s capital and several other incidents were reported elsewhere.
In the northern city of Novi Sad, where the anti-Vucic revolt in Serbia started more than nine months ago, groups of young protesters shouted, “He is finished,” as they demolished the offices of the president’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
The demonstrators broke windows on the party’s downtown office and carried away some documents and pieces of furniture from inside. The police or Vucic’s supporters, who have guarded the office for months, where nowhere to be seen.
In Belgrade, the Serbian capital, police in the evening fired tear gas in at least two locations to disperse the protesters and keep groups of supporters of the opposing camps apart. Protesters in a downtown area scrambled in panic, some tumbling to the ground as they tried to run away.
Vucic told pro-government Informer television that “the state will win” as he announced a crackdown on anti-government protesters, accusing them of inciting violence and of being “enemies of their own country.”
He reiterated earlier claims that the protests have been organized from abroad, offering no evidence.
The unrest throughout Serbia this week marked a serious escalation in largely peaceful demonstrations led by Serbia’s university students that have shaken Vucic’s firm grip on power in the Balkan country.
Rival groups on Wednesday hurled rock and bottles at each other amid clouds of smoke and chaos. An army security officer at the SNS party offices at one point fired his gun in the air, saying later he felt his life had been in danger.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic on Thursday said there were gatherings at some 90 locations in the country the previous evening.
The Serbian president has faced accusations of stifling democratic freedoms and of allowing organized crime and corruption to flourish in the country that is a candidate for European Union membership. He denies those allegations.
The EU’s Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said the reports of violence were “deeply concerning.”
“Advancing on the EU path requires citizens can express their views freely and journalists can report without intimidation or attacks,” Kos added on the social media platform X.
Protesters gathered in large numbers again on Thursday evening in the capital Belgrade, in Novi Sad and in some smaller towns, defying sharp warnings against protests from Vucic and other government officials.
On Wednesday evening in Belgrade riot police used tear gas to disperse groups of protesters. Police officers formed a cordon around a makeshift camp of Vucic’s loyalists outside the presidency building downtown.
Dacic, the interior minister, accused the protesters of attacking governing party loyalists. He said “those who broke the law will be identified and sanctioned.”
University students posted on X to accuse the authorities of trying to “provoke a civil war with the clashes” at demonstrations. The rallies so far passed for the most part without incident even while drawing hundreds of thousands of people.
Occasional violence in the past months mostly involved incidents between protesters and the police, rather than between rival groups.
“Police were guarding the regime loyalists who were throwing rocks and firing flares at the protesters,” a post by the informal group, Students in Blockade, said. The account is run by students from across Serbia who have been protesting the government since late last year.
Demonstrations started in November after a renovated train station canopy crashed in Novi Sad, killing 16 people and triggering accusations of corruption in state-run infrastructure projects.
The protesters are demanding that Vucic call an early parliamentary election, which he has refused to do. Serbia is formally seeking EU membership, but Vucic has maintained strong ties with Russia and China.

SRINAGAR, India: Flash floods caused by torrential rains in a remote village in India-controlled Kashmir have left at least 44 people dead and dozens missing, authorities said Thursday, as rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village brought at least 200 people to safety.
Following a cloudburst in the region’s Chositi village, which triggered floods and landslides, disaster management official Mohammed Irshad estimated that at least 50 people were still missing, with many believed to have been washed away.
India’s deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, warned that the disaster “could result in substantial” loss of life.
Susheel Kumar Sharma, a local official, said that at least 50 seriously injured people are being treated in local hospitals. Many were rescued from a stream filled with mud and debris.
Chositi is a remote Himalayan village in Kashmir’s Kishtwar district and is the last village accessible to motor vehicles on the route of an ongoing annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine at an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,500 feet) and about an 8-kilometer (5-mile) trek from the village.
Multiple pilgrims were also feared to be affected by the disaster. Officials said that the pilgrimage had been suspended and more rescue teams were on the way to the area to strengthen rescue and relief operations. The pilgrimage began on July 25 and was scheduled to end on Sept. 5.
The first responders to the disaster were villagers and local officials who were later joined by police and disaster management officials, as well as personnel from India’s military and paramilitary forces, Sharma said.
Abdul Majeed Bichoo, a local resident and a social activist from a neighboring village, said that he witnessed the bodies of eight people being pulled out from under the mud. Three horses, which were also completely buried alongside them under debris, were “miraculously recovered alive,” he said.
The 75-year-old Bichoo said Chositi village had become a “sight of complete devastation from all sides” following the disaster.
“It was heartbreaking and an unbearable sight. I have not seen this kind of destruction of life and property in my life,” he said.
The devastating floods swept away the main community kitchen set up for the pilgrims as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes, officials said. They added that more than 200 pilgrims were in the kitchen when the tragedy struck. The flash floods also damaged and washed away many homes, clustered together in the foothills.
Photos and videos circulating on social media showed extensive damage caused in the village with multiple vehicles and homes damaged.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that “the situation is being monitored closely” and offered his prayers to “all those affected by the cloudburst and flooding.”
“Rescue and relief operations are underway. Every possible assistance will be provided to those in need,” he said in a social media post.
Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in India’s Himalayan regions, which are prone to flash floods and landslides. Cloudbursts have the potential to wreak havoc by causing intense flooding and landslides, impacting thousands of people in the mountainous regions.
Experts say cloudbursts have increased in recent years partly because of climate change, while damage from the storms also has increased because of unplanned development in mountain regions.
Kishtwar is home to multiple hydroelectric power projects, which experts have long warned pose a threat to the region’s fragile ecosystem.