At least 32 people were killed and more than 85 injured when a passenger train carrying more than 350 people collided with a freight train on Tuesday, February 28, shortly before midnight, in Tempi Greece, near the city of Larissa, the Greek Fire Service said.
“We just heard a bang… the (train) car started spinning, before ending up sideways when we managed to exit,” one male passenger told Greek public broadcaster ERT.
“It was 10 nightmarish seconds with fire, you couldn’t see much from the smoke,” said a second passenger.
Recovery efforts are underway, with the focus on the first two carriages of the passenger train, the Greek Fire Service said. The death toll is expected to rise.
The passenger train had been traveling from the capital Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city. The collision follows a nationwide carnival at the weekend which ended with a public holiday on Monday.
Images on Greece’s state-owned public broadcaster ERT showed plumes of thick smoke pouring out of toppled carriages and long lines of rescue vehicles next to them.
Meanwhile, rescue workers with torches searched carriages for survivors as paramedics led shell-shocked passengers from the scene.
The images also showed some surviving passengers arriving in Thessaloniki.
The Greek railway company, Hellenic Train, said in a press release that there was “a head-on collision between two trains: a freight train and train IC 62 which had departed from Athens to Thessaloniki.”
