Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta
has resigned after some 20,000 people took to the streets to protest
over a nightclub fire that killed 32 people.
Friday night's blaze in Bucharest started when a band performing at the club set off fireworks inside.Demonstrators called for Mr Ponta to step down, complaining of government corruption and poor safety supervision.
"I'm handing in my mandate, I'm resigning, and implicitly my government too," Mr Ponta said in a statement.
"I hope the government's resignation will satisfy the people who came out in the streets," he added.
In September, Mr Ponta became the first sitting Romanian prime minister to go on trial charged with corruption. He faces allegations of fraud, tax evasion and money laundering.
He denies the charges and has accused prosecutors of being "totally unprofessional".
The protesters have also demanded the resignation of the mayor of the Bucharest district where the nightclub fire occurred and the country's Interior Minister Gabriel Oprea.
Mr Oprea, the leader of Romania's junior ruling coalition party, the UNPR, remains in his position.
It took a fatal fire that killed mainly young people in a Bucharest rock venue to finally force Romania's youthful Prime Minister and his government to resign.
At 42, Victor Ponta has already survived no-confidence votes, corruption allegations, and the personal hostility of two Romanian presidents. But when at least 20,000 people took to the streets of Bucharest on Tuesday, blaming the country's political elite for the high death toll, and President Klaus Iohannis added his voice to the protesters' demands for political accountability, Mr Ponta finally announced his departure.
More street protests had been planned in the capital and provincial towns. As well as a tough Anti-Corruption Agency, Romania also has a tradition of successful popular protest, since the revolution that overthrew Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989
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