BELGRADE -- Serbian Education Minister Branko Ruzic announced on Twitter that he had handed his resignation to Prime Minister Ana Brnabic in the wake of a mass shooting at a Belgrade school that killed eight pupils and a security guard.
"At the end of three days of national mourning, as a responsible and educated man, professional in performing all previous public duties, as a parent and citizen of Serbia, I made the only rational and honorable decision in these circumstances," Ruzic said on May 7, referring to the shooting that occurred on May 3.
Ruzic, who expressed condolences to the families of the victims, said he would carry the dramatic images of events from the school for the rest of his life.
Ruzic is an official of the Socialist Party of Serbia, a junior coalition partner of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party led by President Aleksandar Vucic.
The announcement came as shocked Serbians continued to mourn those killed at the school and in a second, separate mass shooting the following day that killed eight other people and raised calls by the opposition for government resignations. A protest march is scheduled for May 8 in Belgrade.
The 13-year-old suspect -- identified by the initials K.K. -- in the country's first-ever mass shooting at a school is thought by authorities to have used two guns owned by his father to kill eight fellow students and a security guard and seriously injure six more students and a teacher at the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School in Belgrade on May 3.
He is in custody under psychiatric evaluation, and his father has been detained for up to 30 days. The youth is under the age of criminal responsibility in Serbia.
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Serbian President Calls Latest Mass Shooting An Act Of Terrorism
State television said on May 6 that the suspect in the second series of shootings, identified as a 21-year-old man with the initials U.B., has acknowledged using an automatic rifle and a handgun during what authorities describe as a partly random rampage around Mladenovac and Smederevo outside Belgrade on May 4.
Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) quoted information from the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Smederevo as saying U.B. had also said his motives included terrorizing the community.
Eight people were killed and 14 more injured in that shooting spree.
The Interior Ministry released video of that adult suspect's arrest in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac early on May 5 after a massive manhunt.
SEE ALSO: After Two Mass Shootings In Serbia, Grief, Blame, And A Search For AnswersThe rare mass shootings have evoked outrage nearly three decades after bitter conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, in a country and region where gun ownership remains high.
Vucic and his governing allies have responded with pledges to impose new controls on gun access and possession, particularly of handguns.
The Interior Ministry said on May 4 that extensive controls will be conducted "in order to determine whether owners keep weapons in accordance with current regulations, separate from ammunition, and locked in adequate cabinets and safes."