At least 29 people died in a serious train accident in Greece on Wednesday night. A spokesman for the fire brigade also said on state television that at least 85 people were injured, some of them seriously, when a freight train collided head-on with a passenger train. “The search and rescue operation is ongoing,” the spokesman said. According to state television, there were 350 travelers and 20 railway workers on board the trains. “It’s a tragedy,” said a firefighter at the scene of the accident near the city of Larissa on state television.
No details were available from official sources about the circumstances of the accident. According to initial information from railway workers, a passenger train that had started from Athens collided head-on with a freight train coming from the opposite direction – from the northern Greek port of Thessaloniki. The passenger train is the Intercity 62, which left Athens at 7:22 p.m. on Tuesday evening for Thessaloniki.
Greek television showed videos from the scene of the accident near Tempi in central Greece. Several derailed wagons with shattered windows and thick clouds of smoke were seen. Debris lay on the street. Firefighters and rescue workers tried to find survivors in the rubble. “Most of the injured have head injuries, broken pelvises, arms and legs. Unfortunately, there are numerous people who are still in the rubble,” a member of a rescue team told reporters at the scene.
A survivor said fire broke out on the passenger train after the collision. “There was chaos and a roar from hell,” he added on state television. “We smashed the window panes with our suitcases and groped our way out of our wagon in the dark,” said a young man.
The passenger train traveling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki and a freight train traveling from Thessaloniki to Larissa had a head-on collision near the city of Larissa, the governor of the Thessaly region Konstantinos Agorastos told Skai TV channel. A total of four wagons derailed and at least two caught fire. The first two wagons were “almost completely destroyed” by the impact. About 250 passengers were safely taken to Thessaloniki by bus, said Governor Agorastos.
The route, which connects Athens with the northern Greek port of Thessaloniki, has been modernized in recent years. The Greek railways (Hellenic Train) are operated by the Italian state railway Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane (FS). Railway workers said on the Greek broadcaster Real FM that, despite the modernization, there were significant problems with the electrical coordination of traffic control.
