Greek train crash prompts protests as relatives give DNA to identify victims

Relatives lined up to give DNA samples on Thursday in the hope of identifying victims of the Greek train disaster as strikes and protests erupted over the country’s outdated rail system.

Carriages were thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train.

As more bodies were recovered, the number of dead rose to 57, among them university students returning home after a long holiday weekend.

Outside the hospital in Larissa, where many of the victims were brought, a woman called Katerina, searching for her missing brother screamed: “Murderers! Murderers! I will leave tomorrow with a coffin!”

Katerina, whose anger was directed at the government and the rail company, had, like other relatives looking for loved ones, given a DNA sample to try to identify her brother.

Dimitris Bournazis said the crash should lead to a full safety overhaul of the country’s rail system. “I’ve lost my brother, my father. That can’t change, I know it,” he said. “But the point is for us not to mourn victims like that again. They bought 50 tickets to death.”

The railway workers’ union launched a strike in protest that ground train services to a halt across the country. As many in Greece demanded answers, the station master in Larissa, near the accident, has admitted a role, his lawyer Stefanos Pantzartzidis said.

“He is literally devastated,” Mr Pantsartzidis told reporters. “Since the first moment, he has assumed responsibility proportionate to him," he said, while hinting that the station master, whose name has not been made public, was not the only one to blame.

A judicial inquiry will try to establish how the two trains could be travelling in opposite directions on the same track for more than 10 minutes without anyone raising the alarm. The collision was the country’s deadliest ever, and more than 48 survivors remain in hospital, six of them in intensive care.

Fire service spokesperson Yiannis Artopios said the grim recovery effort was proceeding “centimetre by centimetre”.

“We can see that there are more (bodies) of people there. Unfortunately, they are in a very bad condition because of the collision,” he said.

Residents in Larissa lined up to give blood, many waiting in heavy rain for more than an hour, while the city’s hotel association provided free accommodation to relatives of the crash victims. Nine bodies have been identified through genetic matches so far, authorities said.