“As prime minister, I owe everyone, especially the relatives of the victims, (asking) forgiveness,” Mitsotakis wrote, in a letter addressed to the Greeks and posted on his Facebook account.
“In Greece in 2023, two trains cannot go in opposite directions on the same line without being noticed,” the Greek Prime Minister was quoted by the French Press Agency as saying.
The conservative prime minister emphasized that “we cannot, do not want, and should not hide behind human error,” attributed to the station manager.
Mitsotakis’s remarks come as a gathering is organized in Athens on Sunday morning, to honor the memory of the 57 people killed in the train disaster that occurred this week near Larissa, where the station manager is preparing to testify before the Greek judiciary.
The prime minister will attend a morning mass at the Orthodox Cathedral in Athens, where all the country’s churches have planned to honor the memory of the victims of what authorities described as a “national tragedy”.
Information about the fateful accident
- The accident occurred near the town of Tempe, about 380 kilometers north of Athens, but the director of the train station of the nearby city of Larissa was arrested.
- The speed of the two trains when they collided was not clear, but local broadcaster ERT said it was more than 140 kilometers per hour.
- Survivors said that the impact of the collision knocked several passengers out of the windows of the train carriages, and the TV channel quoted rescuers as saying that they found some bodies of the victims about 30 to 40 meters from the accident site.
- Several carriages derailed, at least 3 of which caught fire, and one carriage was on top of the rubble of two others.
- Officials said many of the about 350 people on the commuter train were students returning from Greece’s raucous Carnival.
- This year was the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020 that the 3-day carnival, which precedes Lent, was fully celebrated.
- The government declared three days of national mourning from Wednesday, while flags were flown at half mast in front of all European Commission buildings in Brussels.
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