BELGRADE -- Students and professors at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade gathered on December 27 in solidarity with their counterparts at Charles University in Prague, where a gunman last week killed 14 people, most of them students, and wounded 25 others.
The Belgrade students and professors laid flowers and lit candles in front of the Faculty of Philosophy building to pay their respects to the victims of the mass shooting in Prague on December 21.
Belgrade student Filip Jankovic said his message to his peers in the Czech Republic was: "We understand you and we stand with you." Serbia was the site of two mass shootings earlier this year.
The Prague gunman, who police said took his own life, admitted in a letter that he also killed a man and his baby in a Prague park a week before the shooting at the university, a Prague police spokesman said. The letter was found during a search of the house where police said the gunman killed his father before traveling to Prague to commit the mass shooting.
SEE ALSO: Czech Republic Observes National Day Of Mourning For Victims Of University Mass ShootingThe spokesman told Czeck media that police declined to publish the remaining contents of the letter because it could jeopardize the investigation.
Jankovic said students have to fight for every public space to be safe so they do not have to fear that "someone might run into the faculty building with a rifle while we are having lectures."
He added that students owe that fight "to all those who lost their lives and their loved ones this year" in tragic mass shootings.
Tomas Kuchta, Czech ambassador to Serbia, said at the gathering in Belgrade that Czech society is "in shock and somewhat helpless."
"Academic soil should be a symbol of knowledge and trust," Kuchta said, adding that it will take time to restore that trust.
Dean Danijel Sinani expressed his condolences on behalf of the Faculty of Philosophy and said that it would be difficult to find people who better understand the pain and sadness felt by their colleagues in Prague.
Sinani referred to two mass shootings in Serbia in May in which 19 people, mostly students, were killed.
"The wounds that we all received in May after the unprecedented events are still open and their scars will follow us forever," Sinani said.
The first of the two mass shootings in Serbia took place on May 3 at Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School in Belgrade, where a student of the school killed nine of his peers and a school guard and wounded six students and teachers.
A day later, in a separate incident in the villages of Dubona and Malo Orasje near Belgrade, eight people were fatally shot, mostly children and young people, and 14 people were wounded.