Tens of thousands march in Greece to protest train disaster
CTV
Tens of thousands marched Wednesday in Athens and cities across Greece to protest the deaths of 57 people in the country's worst train disaster, which exposed significant rail safety deficiencies.
Tens of thousands marched Wednesday in Athens and cities across Greece to protest the deaths of 57 people in the country's worst train disaster, which exposed significant rail safety deficiencies.
Labour unions and student associations organized the demonstrations, while strikes halted ferries to the islands and public transportation services in Athens, where at least 30,000 people took part in the protest.
More than 20,000 joined rallies in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, where clashes broke out when 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. 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 Feb. 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 offences, 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 centre-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the defensive. He has pledged the government's full co-operation with a judicial inquiry into the crash.
A federal gun case against U.S. President Joe Biden's son Hunter opened Monday with jury selection, following the collapse of a plea deal that would have avoided the spectacle of a trial so close the 2024 election. First lady Jill Biden was seated in the front row of the courtroom, in a show of support for her son.
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told a gathering of top security officials Saturday that war with China was neither imminent nor unavoidable, despite rapidly escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, stressing the importance of renewed dialogue between him and his Chinese counterpart in avoiding "miscalculations and misunderstandings."