PM apologises to relatives of victims
Clashes have erupted briefly between police and a group of demonstrators in central Athens on the fringes of a protest by thousands of students and railway workers over Greece’s deadliest train crash in living memory.
At least 57 people were killed and dozens were injured on Tuesday when a passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided with a freight train on the same track in central Greece.
After protests over the past three days across the country, some 10,000 students, rail-way workers and groups affiliated with leftist parties gathered in an Athens square on Sunday to express sympathy for the lives lost and to demand better safety standards on the rail network.
“That crime won’t be forgotten,” protesters shouted as they released black balloons into the sky. A placard read: “Their policies cost human lives.”
The train, travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki, was packed with university students returning after a long holiday weekend.
The disaster has triggered an outpouring of anger, as well as a sharp focus on safety standards.
Thousands of people gather at a town square in Athens to protest.
Railway workers, who also lost colleagues in the accident, have staged rotating wal-kouts since Wednesday to denounce cost-cutting and underinvestment in the rail in-frastructure, a legacy of Greece’s debilitating debt crisis from 2010 to 2018.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ government has blamed human error for the crash. However Mr Mitsotakis said on Sunday that human error should not deflect from the responsibilities of a long-suffering railway network.
“As prime minister, I owe everyone, but most of all the relatives of the victims, an apology,” the prime minister wrote on Facebook.
“Justice will very fast investigate the tragedy and determine liabilities.”—AFP
