Hundreds of Serbian students clashed with police on Tuesday during a protest against a police raid on Belgrade University offices, sparking tensions between authorities and anti-government activists that have erupted regularly for more than a year.

Crowds in downtown Belgrade clashed with police, who used rubber batons to disperse demonstrators chanting “dogs” and “traitors,” according to a Reuters witness. Police said the search of Belgrade University offices was part of an investigation into the death of a 25-year-old student last Friday after she fell from a window in a nearby faculty building.

University Rector Vladan Djokic later told the crowd of protesters that police entered the building without a valid legal explanation, searching for documents and seizing computers.

"You can raid university premises, but you can't raid people's consciences," he told the cheering crowd.

Dragan Vasiljevic, director of the Serbian police, said that officers were acting on a court order when they entered the university offices to search for evidence related to the student's death.

He told a press conference in Belgrade that police had found fireworks, radios, gas masks, banners and first aid supplies during the search.

Anti-government protests have gripped Serbia since December 2024, a month after 16 people died when a tent collapsed at a railway station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad. Protesters and opposition leaders have accused Serbia's populist President Aleksandar Vučić and his allies of widespread corruption, links to organized crime, violence against political opponents and a crackdown on media freedom.