“Everything shows that the drama is due, unfortunately, mainly to a tragic human error“, said the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, at a press conference after the tragic fatal collision between two trains in the city of Tempe. An accident in which at least 38 people have lost their liveswhile there are more than a hundred injured.

The Greek Prime Minister has also confirmed the resignation of Konstantinos Karamanlis as Minister of Transport and Infrastructure. He himself had recorded on his official Twitter profile: “I feel it is my duty to do so as a minimum show of respect for the memory of the people who died so unjustly.”

To this resignation is added that of other positions of responsibility such as the heads of the Hellenic Railway Organization (OSE) and ERGOSE, its subsidiary specialized in infrastructure projects.

Mitsotakis assures that their attitude “honours them” and confirms that it will be the Minister of State, Giorgos Gerapetritis, who will assume the Transport portfolio on an interim basis. He will now be in charge of setting up a committee of experts to “examine in depth the causes of the accident.”

“Responsibilities will be settled,” he stressed, assuring that Justice will do its job. In addition, he has called for “unity” to overcome an “unprecedented” tragedy.

They denounce the state of deterioration: “Nothing works”

Despite the fact that the Greek prime minister has pointed to a “tragic human error”, many experts, as well as trade unions and unions in the Greek railway sector, point out that one of the causes of the crash is the state of deterioration where the railways are located.

“Nothing works, everything is done manually, we are in manual mode along the entire Athens-Thessaloniki axis. The traffic lights don’t work either.“, has pointed out the president of the union of train drivers in Greece, Kostas Geridunias, on ERT public television. “If they did, drivers would see red lights and stop on time,” he said.

In fact, in his resignation message, the former Minister of Transport has said that when he took over the portfolio in 2019, the railway sector was “in a situation that does not correspond to the 20th centuryI”. “In these three and a half years we have done everything possible to improve this reality”, he stated, although he acknowledges that “unfortunately, these efforts were not enough to avoid such an accident”.

The trains collided going at high speed

The two trains – one passenger and one commercial – were traveling at high speed when they collided just before midnight (22:00 GMT) north of the city of Larisa, near Tempe, a small town located in a valley where there is a railway tunnel, about 300 kilometers north of Athens.

Everything indicates that the trains, both operated by the Hellenic Train company, They were traveling on the same road at high speed..

The Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation to clarify the causes of the accident and has accused the crime of involuntary manslaughter the head of the Larisa train station, a 59-year-old man, responsible for the management of the trains that circulated in the section where the accident occurred.