At least 16 dead and 85 injured in train crash in Greece

Two trains collided this Tuesday at the end of the day in the center of Greece leave, so far, a balance sheet of 16 dead and 85 injured. After the collision, there was a fire several wagons.

“At least 16 dead” and “85 injured”, announced the Greek firefighters during a press conference after the first hours of the incident. The injured were taken to hospitals near the accident.

For its part, the Greek agency ANA reports “several deaths” and adds that the fire has already been brought under control.

According to local media, the accident happened near temple -about 380 kilometers north of Athens– between a train carrying goods and a passenger train – the IC 62 – which covered the route Thessaloniki-Larisa.

Some 40 officers from the Greek Fire Department and Hellenic Trains staff approached the area to help evacuate people and provide assistance to travelers with some 30 ambulances.

According to government officials, the army and police forces are also involved in the rescue efforts for victims after the activation of the alert protocol provided for such accidents.

With the incident, several of the carriages derailed, in which many passengers were trapped. The images even show part of the train completely overturned on one side and witnesses say that given the high speed at which they were traveling, the first cars were completely pulverized after the collision.

This was confirmed a few minutes later by the Regional Governor of Thessaly, Kostas Agorastoswho told the media SKAI What “cars 1 and 2 do not exist, they are completely destroyed”.

the local newspaper Efsyne reported at least 50 injured – of which it is presumed that 20 Current Severity Tables– and, so far, the number of victims has not been specified. They also made sure there was 350 people traveling in the train.

Some 15 passengers were transferred unconscious at the University Hospital of the city of Larisa and at the city hospital of Katerinis.

It is expected that the Minister of Health, Thanos Weepingarrive at the scene of the incident as soon as possible while the Head of Infrastructure and Transport, Nikos Papaswill go to Tempi.

For his part, the Minister of Civil Protection, Christos Stylianidisis at the center of assistance task coordination operations.

At the moment, the cause of the accident is unknown, although it is presumed that it happened because the two trains were traveling at high speed on the same track. Preliminary investigations suggest there was an error in changing the railway lines which left the two running on the same.

Likewise, this tragedy occurred on a day when at least two incidents of outages and delays had already been reported, as well as complaints of malfunctions in the remote control and line signaling system that date back some time. .

News in development…