Serbian MPs toss smoke grenades in parliament

(CNN) — Serbia’s parliament descended into chaos on Tuesday as opposition lawmakers threw smoke grenades and tear gas inside the chamber to protest against the government and support demonstrating students.

With dozens of lawmakers gathered in the chamber, opposition MPs lit flares and tossed smoke grenades and eggs, while others leapt from their seats to brawl with security guards.

As the room filled with smoke, some unrolled a banner reading: “Serbia rises up to bring down the regime.”

Three members of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), including a pregnant woman, were injured in the melee, with one suffering a stroke, CNN’s Serbian affiliate N1 reported.

The chaos marks a dramatic escalation to the student-led protest movement that has brought the country to a standstill, delivering the stiffest threat yet to the hardline rule of President Aleksandr Vucic.

Serbia’s political crisis began after the canopy of a railway station in the city of Novi Sad collapsed in November, killing 15 people.

The tragedy became a flashpoint for latent discontent that had been brewing over Vucic’s 12 years in power.

What began as vigils for the dead have led to four months of near-daily protests that have drawn in large swaths of Serbian society and reached every corner of the Balkan nation.

The crumbled canopy – which many believe collapsed due to hasty work by shoddy subcontractors – has come to serve as a symbol of what many see as corruption at the heart of the Serbian state.

During Tuesday’s skirmish, some opposition lawmakers held signs reading “justice for the killed,” while a crowd outside held 15 minutes of silence, one for each of the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy.

The Vucic government has responded to the protesters with a jumbled mix of carrots and sticks.

It has veered between dismissing the movement as a sham orchestrated by foreign governments to undermine Serbia, and offering a more conciliatory tone and promising concessions.

Parliament was due on Tuesday to confirm the resignation of Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, who announced in January that he would stand down in an attempt to calm the political tensions.

However, the protesters saw the move as an attempt by the president to deflect blame – a tactic he has used to defuse past crises.

“With the Prime Minister resigning, (the protesters) are saying, ‘No, no, no, this is not enough. We are not going to let you pull the wool over our eyes again,’” Engjellushe Morina, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN at the time.

Vucevic later went to a hospital to visit Jasmina Obradovic, the lawmaker who suffered a stroke. In a post on social media, Vucevic said both Obradovic and the country as whole will “overcome this overdeal.”

Serbia’s parliament had been scheduled on Tuesday to discuss 62 points on its agenda, including a vote on the dismissal of Speaker Ana Brnabic.

Brnabic said Serbia’s parliament “will not back down” after Tuesday’s chaos and said the MPs who disrupted the session were “terrorists.” Lawmakers attempted to resume the session, but opposition MPs continued to whistle and blow horns.