- At least 57 dead in Greece’s worst train crash
- The government promises to repair the ailing rail system
- Railway employees leave their jobs in protest at safety standards
KATERINI, Greece, March 3 (Portal) – Families and friends, dressed in black, clutched in tears as the coffin of a 34-year-old mother killed in Greece’s deadliest train crash was lifted up the stairs of a church at Am Friday.
The first known funeral after Tuesday night’s accident, which killed at least 57 people, was held in the northern town of Katerini, as police said 52 bodies had been identified so far – almost all from DNA testing since the crash was so intense.
Wagons were thrown off the tracks, some crushed and bursting into flames, when a passenger train and a freight train collided at high speed on the same track in central Greece.
On board the passenger train were more than 350 people, many of them students, returning to the northern city of Thessaloniki from the capital Athens after a long holiday weekend.
On Friday, 38 more passengers were hospitalized, seven of them in intensive care.
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Anger has been growing across the country over the crash, which the government blames on human error but unions say was inevitable due to lack of maintenance and faulty signaling.
“They killed him, that’s what happened. They are all murderers,” Panos Routsi said earlier on Friday as he and his wife awaited fearful confirmation of what had happened to their 22-year-old son Denis.
Just before the crash, his son had told him he would be late and would call. “I’m still waiting,” Routsi told the hospital in Larissa, not far from the crash site, where many of the victims were taken.
Denis had traveled to Athens to see friends and returned home by train that never reached its destination. His mother Mirela showed reporters a picture of her beaming son on her cellphone.
After evening protests over the past two days, around 2,000 students took to the streets of Athens on Friday and blocked the street in front of Parliament for a minute’s silence. Students also demonstrated in Larissa, the central city near the crash site.
“Your profits, our dead,” read a banner signed by a university student organization.
Another poster read: “It wasn’t an accident, it was murder.”
Rail workers extended their strike to a second day on Friday and more rallies were planned as many demanded how such a tragedy could have happened.
PROTESTS
In schoolyards in Athens, students used their bags to write the words “Call me when you get there,” a phrase that has become one of the protest slogans.
Larissa’s 59-year-old station master was arrested and has admitted some responsibility, his lawyer said, but stressed he was not the only culprit.
“The association has been sounding the alarm for so many years but it has never been taken seriously,” the largest railway union said, calling for a meeting with the new transport minister, appointed after the crash with a mandate to ensure such a tragedy never happened happen again.
The union said it wanted a clear timeline for implementing safety protocols.
Work continued at the crash site, where rescue workers used cranes to lift some carriages that were thrown off the tracks.
Opposition politicians also began to voice criticism.
“Any attempt to hide and cover up the truth about the Tempi tragedy disrespects the dead and predicts new tragedies,” said Popi Tsapanidou, a spokesman for left-wing Syriza, Greece’s main opposition party.
Before the crash, the government had said it would hold elections in the spring, with media citing April 9 as the most likely date. Political analysts say the plan could now be rolled back.
Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Larissa, Alexandros Avramidis in Katerini and Karolina Tagaris, Renee Maltezou, Michele Kambas, Alkis Konstandinidis; writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Christina Fincher
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