Serbia’s education minister submitted his resignation Sunday following two mass shootings, one of them at a primary school, that left 17 people dead, and the country’s government urged citizens to turn in all their unregistered weapons or run the risk of a prison sentence, AP reports.
Education Minister Branko Ruzic was the first Serbian official to resign over the shootings despite widespread calls for more senior officials to step down in the wake of the back-to-back bloodshed. Ruzic cited the “catastrophic tragedy that has engulfed our country” in explaining his decision.
Weekend funerals were held for the nine victims of the shootings at the school in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, on Wednesday and the eight people killed in a rural area south of the capital on Thursday night. The violence, which also wounded 21 people, has stunned and anguished the Balkan nation, which tops the European list of registered arms per capita but had its last mass shooting a decade ago.
Soon after the first attack, Ruzic was quick to blame “the cancerous, pernicious influence of the internet, video games, so-called Western values.” Such criticism is common in Serbia, which has refused to fully face its role in the wars of the 1990s that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Serbian war criminals are largely regarded as heroes, and pro-Russia and anti-Western sentiment have thrived in recent years as members of minority groups routinely face harassment and sometimes physical violence.
