BELGRADE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th July, 2020) Police in Serbia have discovered supplies of Molotov cocktails and gas masks during searches of buildings linked to protesters amid a week of violent clashes after the government reintroduced lockdown measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, Belgrade's Deputy Mayor Goran Vesic said on Sunday.
"During searches of hooligans and neo-Nazis who attended protests in front of the parliament, police last night discovered Molotov cocktails and gas masks. Belgrade city employees, along with the police, also found stone blocks in containers nearby that protesters planned to attack police with," the deputy mayor wrote on Facebook.
Violent protests have been held in the Serbian capital and other cities since Tuesday after the government once again imposed a lockdown amid an increase in COVID-19 cases. On Saturday, Serbian police director Vladimir Rebic said that 71 people were detained during protests held the day before, and 130 police officers have suffered injuries since the demonstrations broke out.
The damage from the first two nights of unrest in the Serbian capital over President Aleksandar Vucic's decision to reimpose lockdown measures is estimated to come to one million Euros ($1.1 million), Vesic said on the same day.
The number of new coronavirus disease cases began to surge in Serbia in the last week of June, after the government lifted many of the restrictive lockdown measures. On Saturday, 345 new positive tests were registered, taking the country's case total to 18,073.
