An intercity passenger train carrying some 350 passengers traveling the capital Athens and Thessaloniki collided at high speed with a freight train in central Greece near Tempe, a small town next to a valley, on Tuesday evening. The first two carriages, which caught fire, were almost completely destroyed. Around 150 firefighters and 40 ambulances were at the scene. At least 32 people were killed and dozens others injurd in the accident. More than 50 were transported to hospital. Recovery efforts are underway. Officials said the army had been contacted to assist.The death toll is expected to rise. It is not yet known what caused the collision.
„Turning over we were being burned. Fire was right and left… For ten, fifteen seconds it was chaos. Tumbling over, fires, cables hanging, broken windows, people screaming, people trapped. It was two meters high from where we jumped to leave and beneath there was broken iron debris,” a passenger described the accident. “It was a very powerful collision,” the regional governor of the Thessaly region, Kostas Agorastos, declared at television.
