Greece Prepare Crash Kills at Least 36

At the very least 36 individuals had been killed when a passenger practice and a freight practice collided in northern Greece, with an affect so intense that cranes had been getting used to take away wreckage within the seek for survivors, a Greek fireplace service official mentioned on Wednesday.

The reason for the crash, which occurred simply earlier than midnight on Tuesday close to the small city of Tempe, was not instantly clear. About 350 passengers had been on the practice because it traveled north from Athens to Thessaloniki, based on Hellenic Prepare, which operated the route.

The crash was the worst rail catastrophe in Greece since 1968, when 34 individuals died after two passenger trains collided close to Corinth, slightly greater than 40 miles west of Athens.

Eighty-five individuals had been taken to hospitals with accidents, and 66 had been admitted, the Greek fireplace service mentioned in a press release. With the restoration operation nonetheless underway, there have been fears that the dying toll would rise.

“Home windows had been shattering and folks had been screaming,” a younger man, who was not recognized, informed a tv crew after surviving the crash. “There was panic within the carriage. An enormous chunk of metallic from the opposite practice had come by means of one of many home windows.”

A number of carriages derailed upon affect, and a minimum of three caught fireplace. A spokeswoman for the Greek police, Constantina Dimoglidou, mentioned the method of figuring out the lifeless had begun at a hospital within the metropolis of Larissa, about 20 miles south of Tempe, asking kinfolk of passengers to name a hotline for info.

Many of the victims had been younger, Greece’s well being minister, Thanos Plevris, informed reporters exterior the hospital. “It’s a horrible course of for fogeys and kinfolk,” he mentioned.

Vasileios Vathrakoyiannis, a spokesman for the fireplace service, mentioned at a televised briefing that the rescue operation was “presently targeting the 2 first carriages of the passenger practice, which have overturned.” He mentioned 4 cranes had been getting used.

Tv footage confirmed purple cranes looming over the twisted, charred wreckage, as police and rescue employees in fluorescent jackets surveyed the scene.

“This can be a horrible evening,” Kostas Agorastos, the governor of the Thessaly area, mentioned on tv. He mentioned two of the carriages “mainly don’t exist anymore. Due to the power of the affect they had been thrown into the air.”

The military was helping with the rescue operation, and Greece’s minister for civil safety, Christos Stylianides, was coordinating the state’s response, whereas Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was on his solution to the scene.

“There have been many massive items of metal,” Vassilis Polyzos, an area resident, informed The Related Press. “The trains had been fully destroyed, each passenger and freight trains.”

Mr. Polyzos mentioned he might see individuals who seemed to be dazed and disoriented making an attempt to flee from the trains as he arrived on the scene. “Folks, naturally, had been scared — very scared,” he mentioned. “They had been wanting round, looking; they didn’t know the place they had been.”

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