One of Greece’s worst-ever rail disasters, which killed at least 43 people, was caused by “tragic human error,” the country’s prime minister has said.
PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke after visiting the site of the collision between a passenger service and a freight train on Tuesday night.
The local station master is charged with murder. The Greek Minister of Transport has resigned.
Rescue teams are continuing to search for survivors.
The accident happened just before midnight on Tuesday. The passenger train carrying about 350 people collided with a freight train as it exited a tunnel after leaving the town of Larissa.
It is still unclear why both services were running on the same track.
The station master, who is in charge of signalling, denies wrongdoing and blames the accident on a possible technical fault.
After visiting the site, Mr Mitsotakis said everything pointed to “a tragic human error”.
“Justice will take its course,” he said in a televised address. “The people will be accountable, while the state will be with the people.”
Announcing his resignation, Transport Minister Kostas Kramanlis said: “When something so tragic happens, it’s impossible to go on and pretend it didn’t happen.”
Trade unions say the collisions are multifactorial and the crash highlighted chronic deficiencies, including staff shortages, broken signals and outdated facilities.
Kostas Agorastos, regional governor of Thessaly, said the first four carriages of the passenger train derailed and the first two caught fire and were “almost completely destroyed”.
The train was traveling from Athens to Thessaloniki, which has a large student population, and it is believed that many of the students on board were returning after a holiday for Greek Orthodoxy.
Survivors have described scenes of chaos after the crash, with one shaken passenger telling the JEE News: “People were scared and screaming.”
Giannis Antonoglu, who escaped from the fifth compartment of the passenger train, said that the windows suddenly broke and “we tilted at 45 degrees like we were about to tip over”.
Passenger Stergios Meninus, 28, who jumped to safety from the wreckage, told JEE News: “The fire started immediately. We were burning when we were turning around.”
Some passengers said they were forced to break vehicle windows with their bodies or belongings to escape the burning debris.
Larissa’s mayor said some of the dead could only be identified through genetic testing.
Relatives of the missing passengers have provided DNA samples to help identify the bodies, a hospital in Larisa said.
