Two trains collide in Greece, 26 dead, at least 85 injured

ATHENS: Twenty-six people were killed and at least 85 injured in the head-on collision of two trains in Greece on Tuesday night, firefighters said, while the circumstances of the crash remained unclear.
A passenger train linking Athens with the northern city of Thessaloniki collided with a freight train outside the town of Larissa in central Greece, the governor of the Thessaly region said.
“The collision was very strong,” Governor Konstantinos Agorastos told SKAI TV, adding that the first four carriages of the passenger train had derailed.
The first two wagons, which caught fire after the collision, were “almost completely destroyed”, Agorastos said.
Around 250 passengers were safely evacuated to Thessaloniki in buses. A passenger told public broadcaster ERT he managed to escape after smashing the train window with his suitcase.
“There was panic in the car, people were screaming,” a young man who was evacuated to a nearby bridge told SKAI TV.
“It was like an earthquake,” Angelos Tsiamouras, another passenger, told ERT.
Broadcaster SKAI showed footage of derailed, badly damaged cars with broken windows and thick plumes of smoke, as well as debris strewn across the road. Rescue workers were seen carrying torches into cars searching for trapped passengers.
“The evacuation of passengers is underway in very difficult conditions given the seriousness of the collision of the two trains”, spokesman for the fire department Vassilis Varthakogiannis said in a televised address.
In the early hours of Wednesday, footage from public broadcaster ERT showed rescuers with headlights searching surrounding fields for survivors.
Local media reported that around 350 people were traveling on the passenger train.
The freight train was traveling from Thessaloniki to Larissa.

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