NOVI SAD (Serbia), Nov 2 — Thousands gathered in Novi Sad today to honour the victims of a railway station disaster that sparked the anti-government movement which toppled Serbia’s right-wing ruling party a week earlier.

The commemoration marked two years since a concrete canopy at the newly renovated railway station in Serbia’s second-largest city collapsed, killing 16 people, including two sisters aged six and 10.

Amid nationwide grief and mounting questions over the station’s multi-million-euro renovation, the disaster sparked some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

“It’s hard to go back to the place where it all happened,” Dijana Hrka, whose 27-year-old son Stefan was killed in the collapse, told AFP.