Clashes break out in Athens as thousands march to protest train disaster in Greece

Clashes broke out after the rallies in Athens and two other cities. More than 20,000 people joined rallies in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, where several dozen youths challenged a police cordon.

Twelve students from the city’s university were among the dead in last week’s head-on crash between two trains.

Police fired tear gas in the southern city of Patras, where a municipal band earlier played music from a funeral march while leading the demonstration.

Massive demonstration in Athens where tens of thousands of people protest the #GreeceTrainCrash chanting it was no accident, but rather a “government crime”. #Greece #Τεμπη pic.twitter.com/LhjSMJ7J0z

— Savvas Karmaniolas (@savvaskarma) March 8, 2023

In the central city of Larissa, near the scene of the train collision, students holding black balloons chanted “No to profits over our lives!” The accident occurred on February 28 near the northern Greek town of Tempe. A passenger train slammed into a freight carrier coming in the opposite direction on the same line, and some of its derailed cars went up in flames.

A stationmaster accused of placing the trains on the same track has been charged with negligent homicide and other offenses, and the country’s transportation minister and senior railway officials resigned the day after the crash.

But revelations of serious safety gaps on Greece’s busiest rail line have put the center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the defensive. He has pledged the government’s full cooperation with a judicial inquiry into the crash.

At least 36 people were killed after a train with 350 passengers aboard collided with a freight train in northern Greece. Two of the carriages “basically don’t exist anymore,” a regional governor said.https://t.co/i9LmCUt2rN pic.twitter.com/YzDoxOK5Eo

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 1, 2023

“This is more than a train collision and a tragic railway accident. You get the sense that the country has derailed,” Nasos Iliopoulos, a spokesperson for Greece’s main left-wing opposition party, Syriza, said.

Senior officials from a European Union railway agency were expected in Athens as part of promised assistance to help Greece improve railway safety. The agency in the past publicly highlighted delays in Greece’s implementation of safety measures.

Safety experts from Germany also were expected to travel to Greece to help advise the government, Greece’s new Transport Minister George Gerapetritis said.

A protestor runs as clashes take place during a demonstration following the fatal collision of two trains, near the city of Larissa, in Athens, Greece, March 8, 2023. (Reuters)

“I, too, express my anguish and heartbreak over what happened in Tempe. This is an unprecedented national tragedy, which has scarred us all because of the magnitude of the tragedy: this unjustified loss of a great number of our fellow human beings,” Gerapetritis said.

He acknowledged major omissions in safety procedures on the night of the crash. Strikes have halted all national rail services since the collision.

Wednesday’s protests were also backed by striking civil servants’ associations and groups marking International Women’s Day. Subways ran for a few hours in Athens to allow people to get to the demonstration. The strikes also closed state-run primary schools and had public hospitals operating at reduced capacity.