Many thousands of Greeks demonstrated on Sunday outside the Greek parliament in Athens after the train accident in which 57 people died on Tuesday. The protests turned violent when some protesters set trash cans on fire and threw petrol bombs at the police. The police responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Initially, the protesters were peaceful. They brought with them large quantities of black balloons, which they released into the sky in memory of the dead. People mark a minute’s silence during a protest outside the Greek parliament in Athens. Photo: Aggelos Barai / AP There were also demonstrations in several other cities on Sunday after the train accident that occurred outside Larissa, approximately 380 kilometers north of Athens. Trains and subways are at a standstill due to strikes, reports AFP. It was a passenger train and a freight train that collided head-on, and at least three carriages caught fire. On Sunday, 55 of the 57 victims have been identified, writes the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. The train collision was very powerful. Photo: Vaggelis Kousioras / AP The Prime Minister asks for forgiveness. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotaki on Wednesday called the train accident a “tragic human failure”. It has provoked the Greeks. They believe the reason is, among other things, lack of maintenance of the railway network. Already on Thursday there were protesters outside the headquarters of the Greek railway operator Hellenic Train in Athens. On Friday, there were also clashes between police and demonstrators in Athens. On Sunday, the Prime Minister asked for forgiveness. “Of course, I owe everyone, but above all to the relatives of the victims, a big apology, personally, as well as in the name of all those who ruled the country for years,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote on social media, according to Kathimerini. “In Greece in 2023, it is not possible for two trains to move in opposite directions on the same line and not be noticed by anyone. We cannot, do not want and must not hide behind human error,” the Prime Minister wrote further. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (second from left) and Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis (far left) visited the accident site on Wednesday. Photo: Dimtiris Papamitsos / AP Greece’s transport minister Kostas Karamanlis already asked on Wednesday to be allowed to leave after the violent train accident. In a statement, Karamanlis wrote that resigning was his duty and that it was the least he could do to honor the memory of the victims. He also wrote that he took responsibility for the state’s “long-term mistakes”. The station manager is charged The station manager in Larissa was arrested already on Wednesday. He is blamed for the fact that the two trains were on a collision course and that it was not detected and stopped before the accident. The station manager has apologized, but is charged with many serious matters. The charges relate to having weakened transport safety on the route, murder of all of the dead, and bodily harm to all who survived with injuries, writes Kathimerini. The prosecution is also looking at who was responsible for the inexperienced station manager being in charge at the very important Larissa station. He had a short training program and had only been on the job for 35 days when the accident happened.
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