In Greece’s worst rail disaster, carriages were thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train on Tuesday. Both the trains were on the same track and the accident resulted in the death of dozens of passengers and crew members near the central city of Larissa. As more bodies were recovered on Thursday, the death toll rose to 57. According to a report by Reuters, university students who were returning home after a long holiday weekend were among the deceased and several passengers sustained injuries in the crash.
What do we know so far?
The incident happened as the passenger train emerged from a tunnel in the municipality of Tempi, BBC reported. The train was travelling from Athens to Thessaloniki, which is said to have a major student population. The BBC report further quoted Thessaly regional governor Kostas Agorastos as saying that the first four carriages of the passenger train were derailed, and the first two caught fire and were “almost completely destroyed”.
According to the Greek fire department, identifying people is proving “very difficult” because temperatures exceeded 1,300C where the fire broke out in the first carriage. Many families have given DNA samples to help identification efforts, BBC report stated.
Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned over the crash, taking responsibility for the authorities’ “longstanding failures” to fix a railway system that was outdated.
Sorrow, anger and protests
“Pain has turned into anger for the dozens of dead and wounded colleagues and fellow citizens,” the railway workers’ union said. The union protested over the crash and brought train services to a halt across the country on Thursday.
According to Reuters, about 2,000 people protested in Athens on Thursday. The Larissa station master who was working that evening has admitted to having a share of responsibility in the accident, his lawyer said. On Wednesday, protesters hurled rocks at train company offices in Athens.
The government said it shared in people’s sorrow and promised to carry out thorough investigations and fix the ailing rail network’s woes. “We are all devastated by this tragic incident,” government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou told a news conference. In a televised address after visiting the crash site, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the collision was “mainly” due “to tragic human error”.
Latest ground updates
- Search operation for survivors is underway
- Three days of national mourning declared by the authorities
- A total of seven charred bodies were recovered from the train’s third car, which served as a restaurant, Aljazeera report stated
- The heads of Hellenic Railways Organization and its subsidiary ERGOSE have also submitted their resignations, the CNN reported