Greece has seen a rise in protests following the 43-person fatal train tragedy, which many believe was an accident waiting to happen.
At the Hellenic Train headquarters in Athens, the organization in charge of maintaining Greece’s railways, rioters and police engaged in physical altercations.
Along with Larissa, which is close to where the catastrophe occurred on Tuesday night, protests were also organized in Thessaloniki.
According to the administration, justice will be served by an impartial investigation.
Following the event, in which a passenger train collided head-on with a freight train, setting the front coaches ablaze, the government has announced three days of national mourning.
The passenger train’s front coaches were largely wrecked.
Students in their 20s returning to Thessaloniki from a long weekend spent commemorating Greek Orthodox Lent made up a large portion of the 350 people on board.
“Tragic human error,” according to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was to blame for the catastrophe.
A station master in Larissa, age 59, has been accused of manslaughter by carelessness. He has said he did nothing wrong and put the blame for the incident on a technical issue.
Members of the rail union feel that despite repeated warnings over a long period, safety measures were not functioning effectively.
Rail workers are preparing to strike on Thursday in protest and mourning over what they claim is government neglect of the railways.
Kostas Karamanlis, the transport minister, resigned in response to the accident, pledging to accept responsibility for the government’s “long-standing failures” to upgrade a railway system he claimed was unfit for the twenty-first century.
Nonetheless, a banner stating that any systemic faults will be covered up in the current official investigation was displayed outside a hospital where the remains of the train crash victims were being taken.
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