Rescue workers at the site of the train collision
The accident, which took place at dawn on Wednesday, killed at least 38 people, while many people are still missing.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis suggested on Wednesday that a “tragic human error” caused the collision between two trains, killing at least 38 people, in the country’s worst train disaster.
Two coaches were destroyed and a third coach caught fire when a passenger train carrying 342 passengers and 10 crew members on a journey between the capital Athens and Thessaloniki in the north-east of the country collided with a freight train making the same trip in the opposite direction.
The fire brigade had announced that the death toll from the collision had risen to 38, indicating that 57 injured people had received treatment in hospitals, six of whom were in intensive care, knowing that many were still missing.
And in a televised speech to the prime minister seeking a new term in the elections scheduled for this year: “Everything indicates that a tragic human error was the main cause” of the disaster.
Mitsotakis said the “terrible train accident was unprecedented” in Greece, and its circumstances would be “fully” investigated.
The Prime Minister had visited the site of the accident and declared mourning for three days in Greece, pledging that his government would make “every effort to uncover the causes of this tragedy.”
Mitsotakis at the scene of the accident
The two trains collided at the exit of a small tunnel over which a highway connects Greece’s two main cities.
A volunteer firefighter said in a statement to Sky TV that some of the passengers have been identified from their body parts, indicating that the death toll is likely to rise.
The police stated that 17 biological samples were taken from body parts and 23 samples were taken from relatives of missing persons.
On Wednesday evening, police in the capital, Athens, fired tear gas at protesters who threw stones at the offices of the railway operator.
A demonstration in Athens on Wednesday evening
Lack of security systems
Following the accident, Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis announced his resignation, stating that “the pain is indescribable.”
“When something this tragic happens, we cannot continue as if nothing happened,” he said in a statement.
Government spokesman Yannis Economou said that, for an unknown reason, the two trains had been traveling on the same track “for several kilometres”.
The head of the union of train drivers, Kostas Niedonias, who inspected the site of the tragedy, denounced the lack of safety systems on this line that connects the two main cities in Greece.
“The two trains were on the same tracks and there was a head-on collision,” he told AFP. “No safety system, remote control or traffic lights were operating. This terrible accident might have been avoided if the safety systems were working.”
Train users in Greece regularly complain regarding the outdated network. The Italian FS group oversees the Hellenic Train, which was privatized in 2018.