36 killed, dozens injured as trains collide in Greece

A passenger train and a cargo train collided head-on in Greece on Tuesday night, February 28, killing at least 36 people and injuring dozens as the country’s deadliest rail crash in living memory threw entire carriages off the tracks.

Many of the victims were believed to be university students returning from a long holiday weekend. Officials predicted that the death toll would rise further.

“The fire was immediate, we were being burned as we turned over, the fire was right and left,” Stergios Minenis, a 28-year-old passenger who jumped to safety from the wreckage, said.

“Windows were being smashed and people were screaming,” a passenger who escaped from the fifth carriage told Skai TV. The impact of iron from the other train caused one of the windows to cave in.”

In the morning, cranes lifted derailed passenger carriages as rescuers combed through the smouldering mangled mass of steel. One carriage was almost 90 degrees off the rest of the wrecked train, with others teetering precariously.

A local station master in charge of signalling has been arrested, according to a police official, as investigators try to figure out why the two trains were on the same track.

“It’s a terrible tragedy. “Our thoughts are with the victims’ families today,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at the crash site, looking distraught.

“One thing I can guarantee is that we will investigate the causes of this tragedy and do everything in our power to ensure that it never happens again.”

The accident happened as the passenger train from Athens to Thessaloniki in northern Greece emerged from a tunnel near the town of Larissa.

Giannis Oikonomou, a government spokesman, said the two trains had been running towards each other on the same track “for many kilometres” before colliding.