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.
