In the largest street protests  the government  has faced since being elected in 2019, police estimated more than 60,000 people – among them transport workers, students and  teachers – took part in demonstrations in cities across Greece.

More than 40,000 people marched to parliament in central Athens alone, chanting  “Murderers!”  and “We are all in the same carriage”.

Violence briefly broke out when a group of protesters clashed with riot police, who fired tear gas at the crowd. Protesters hurled petrol bombs in front of parliament and set a van and rubbish  bins on fire.

Thousands also took to the streets in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-­biggest city, where protesters hurled stones at state buildings.

Many of the 350 people aboard the intercity passenger train that collided head-on with a freight train while travelling on the same track were university students, heading to Thessaloniki from Athens.

‘Message me when you get there’ read a placard in Athens, echoing what has become one of the slogans of the protests.

“We feel angry because the government did nothing for all of those kids. The public transport is a mess,” said one 19- year-old marcher.  “We’re going to be here until things change”  

The conservative government, which had been planning to call an election in the coming weeks, promised yesterday to fix the ailing rail system.

Rail workers had already been staging rolling strikes since Thursday, bringing the network to a halt.

They say their demands for improvement in safety protocols have gone unheard for years and have promised to “impose safety” to ensure that a crash will not be repeated.
“They told us we were lying, we were slanderous, we had other interests. In the end it showed that the workers were right," said the head of the train drivers’ union, Kostas Genidounias.