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Rescuers using cranes and heavy machinery on Thursday searched the wreckage of trains involved in a deadly collision that sent Greece into national mourning and prompted strikes and protests over rail safety. The death toll from Wednesday’s head-on crash involving a passenger train and freight carrier remained at 43 as crews continue to check the burned out and twisted rail car remains for more bodies. More than 50 people remained hospitalized, most in the central Greek city of Larissa, some in serious condition. Railway workers‘ associations called strikes, halting national rail services and the subway in Athens, to protest working conditions and what they described as a lack of modernization of the Greek rail system.
Wednesday’s collision occurred near the small town of Tempe in northern Greece, when a freight train loaded with heavy construction equipment smashed into a passenger service on Greece’s busiest line between Athens and the country’s second largest city, Thessaloniki.
