More than 40,000 people took to the streets of Greece today against the government to express anger at last month’s train crash disaster that killed 57 people.
From the pictures published in the Greek media, you can see the fights that broke out in Syntagma Square near the parliament in the center of Athens.
Police fired tear gas and stun grenades as demonstrators tried to surround them, throwing firebombs and stones.
After retreating, the protesters smashed traffic lights and shop windows and set trash cans on fire, AFP reporters said.
The February 28 tragedy exposed decades of safety failures on Greek railways and has put huge pressure on the conservative government ahead of national elections.
Police said 25,000 people protested in Athens today, as well as about 8,500 in each of the country’s largest cities, Thessaloniki and Patras. Brief clashes also broke out in Patras, police said.
The protests were accompanied by a 24-hour strike, the biggest in the days of industrial action that followed the disaster, this time called by Greece’s main private and public sector unions.
Many of the protesters called on the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to resign after the country’s deadliest rail accident.
“This crime will not be forgotten,” demonstrators chanted as they marched towards the parliament in Athens.
The rail disaster happened shortly before midnight when a passenger train collided head-on with a freight train in central Greece after the two were mistakenly left on the same track. Most of the passengers were students returning from a weekend break.
“Things have to change in this country, we simply cannot mourn all these deaths,” said Athens protester Stavroula Hatzitheodorou, referring to the deadly fires that have swept through Greece in recent years as well as the train crash.
“We hope that things will change in these elections,” Hatzitheodorou, who works in the private sector, told AFP.
A station manager and three other rail officials have been charged, but public anger has focused on long-standing mismanagement of the network and the country has been gripped by a series of sometimes violent mass protests.
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