Clashes erupt in Greece as hundreds of thousands protest deadly train crash

By Edward Mcallister and Renee Maltezou

ATHENS - Protesters hurled petrol bombs and set fire to trash cans in Athens on Friday as hundreds of thousands of Greeks went on strike and took to the streets in nationwide demonstrations on the second anniversary of the country's deadliest train crash.

Fifty-seven people were killed when a passenger train filled with students collided with a freight train on February 28, 2023 in central Greece. The accident has become a painful emblem of the perceived neglect of the country's infrastructure in the decades before the crash and the two years since.

"The government hasn't done anything to get justice," said Christos Main, 57, a musician at the Athens rally. "This wasn't an accident, it was murder," he said.

In one of the biggest protests in Greece in years, public services and many private businesses were brought to a halt and people poured into the streets of cities and towns chanting "murderers" against what they say is the state's role in the disaster. The government denies wrongdoing.

A sea of people descended onto Athens' Syntagma Square in front of parliament, where protesters spray-painted the names of the dead in red on the ground. The slogan "I have no oxygen" - a woman's last words in a call to emergency services - echoed in chants across the country.

The Athens protest was peaceful until a group of hooded youths hurled petrol bombs at police and tried to storm the barricades of the parliament building. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon and cat-and-mouse clashes then spread into the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Clashes also broke out in Greece's second city, Thessaloniki, where a giant crowd choked the centre and people released black balloons into the sky in memory of the dead.

More than 80 people were detained and five were injured in Athens alone, authorities said.

POLITICAL THREAT

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' centre-right government, which won re-election after the crash in 2023, has faced repeated criticism by relatives of the victims for failing to initiate a parliamentary inquiry into political responsibility.

The government says it is up to the judiciary to investigate the accident. In a Facebook post on Friday, Mitsotakis said his government would work to modernise the railway network and make it safer.

"That night, we saw the ugliest face of the country in the national mirror," he wrote of the night of the crash. "Fatal human errors met with chronic state inadequacies."

The safety gaps that caused the crash have not been filled two years on, a state inquiry found on Thursday. A separate judicial investigation remains unfinished and no one has been convicted in the accident.

Opposition parties have accused the government of covering up evidence and urged it to step down. Next week, parliament is expected to debate whether to set up a committee to investigate possible political responsibility in the disaster.

Protesters said they have waited too long.

Anastasia Plakia, who lost two sisters and a cousin in the crash, posted a photo on Facebook of the four of them smiling together in a restaurant: "730 days without you; 730 days of sadness, pain and rage," the post said.

GENERAL STRIKE

All international and domestic flights were grounded as air traffic controllers joined seafarers, train drivers, doctors, lawyers and teachers in a 24-hour general strike to pay tribute to the victims of the crash.

Businesses were shut and theatres cancelled performances.

In a survey carried out this week by Pulse pollsters, 82% of Greeks asked said the train disaster was "one of the most" or "the most" important issue in the country and 66% said they were dissatisfied with the investigations into the accident.

"Every day, the monster of corrupt power appears before us," Maria Karystianou, whose daughter died in the crash and who heads an association of victims' families, told the crowd in Athens

Students shouted "Text me when you get there," - the final message many of the victims' relatives sent them. A cardboard sign read: "Greece kills its children."

"We're here because we're parents... tomorrow it might be our children," said Litsa, a 45-year-old nurse.

- REUTERS