Following School Shootings, Serbian Minister of Education Announces Resignation

JAKARTA - Serbian Education Minister Branko Ruzic announced his resignation on Sunday, following the tragedy of a shooting at an elementary school last week, killing eight children and a security guard, amid public outrage over the incident and another mass shooting a day later.

Serbia is in deep shock and mourning, as two successive shootings hit the country. First, shootings in the capital on Wednesday and shootings outside the city on Thursday, left eight people dead.

The suspects in the two shooting cases, a 13-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man, have been detained by security forces.

Opposition parties, which blame Prime Minister Ana Brnabic's Government for failing to prevent the two actions, called on their supporters to join an anti-government march on Monday evening in Belgrade. Among other things, they demanded the resignation of Minister Ruzic.

"As a responsible and well-bred person, as a professional in fulfilling all public duties over the years, and as a parent and as a citizen of Serbia, I made the rational decision to resign," Minister Ruzic said in his resignation letter to PM Brnabic, reported by Reuters, May 8.

After the shooting, the government introduced a series of measures last week, aimed at preventing violence in schools and reducing the number of guns held by civilians.

It is known that Serbia has a deeply rooted culture of owning firearms, especially in rural areas. However, the country's gun control laws were already quite strict even before the latest shooting.

Serbia and other Western Balkan countries were awash with military-grade weapons and armament in private hands, as the wars that tore the former Yugoslavia tore apart in the 1990s.