Several hundred student protesters have blocked Serbia’s public television station building in Belgrade as tensions soar days before a large rally planned for the weekend that is billed as the climax of months of anti-government demonstrations, writes The Guardian.

“The students, who first blocked the TV building in the capital’s city centre late on Monday, gathered again in their hundreds on Tuesday after announcing that their blockade would last for at least 22 hours. A similar blockade was organised in the country’s second-largest city, Novi Sad.

University students in Serbia are behind almost daily rallies that started after a concrete canopy crashed down at a railway station in Novi Sad last November, killing 15 people. The protests have rocked populist rule of the president, Aleksandar Vučić, and his firm grip on power.

During the blockade on Monday evening, riot police briefly used batons against the crowd, which tried to block one of the entrances to the TV building with metal security fences.

The students blame the public broadcaster for biased reporting and siding with Vučić and the government during the demonstrations. The Serbian president was the guest of the main TV news bulletin on Monday evening.

During the interview, Vučić insulted the student-led protests, warning that security officers would use force against people at the rally planned for Saturday. He added that the nationwide demonstrations would never cause him to step down. “You will have to kill me if you want to replace me”, he said.

The TV reporter who interviewed Vučić called the protesting students “a mob”, which the president appeared to approve of. The interview followed a spat between Vučić and the station, RTS, in which the president described a reporter covering the protests as “an imbecile”. He later apologized for the remark, but said RTS reporters were a “disgrace to their profession””.