Greece train crash: The scene is ‘horrendously bizarre’, but questions now turn to how the tragedy happened
The police wave us through. We are allowed to drive off the motorway, down a rutted track and into a field, and there, in front of us, is a sight at once extraordinary and terrible.
A railway carriage, slumped on its side, its windows broken. The graffiti is still all over the paintwork, like a touchstone to normal life, but there are people with flashlights crawling underneath, looking for any signs of bodies.
There’s nothing normal about this at all. Nor of the freight containers that stand behind, remnants of the freight train that was hurtling along this track on Tuesday night.
Such a mundane, everyday thing – freight being moved; students coming back from holiday. And yet now charged with such sadness.
Dozens of people died here, in this field, when the two trains crashed into each other. From where we stand, it’s easy to see that the passenger train would have been emerging from a tunnel when this accident happened.
One wonders if the driver would have had any time to react. Like so many thoughts about this accident, it’s a bleak one.
The rain begins to fall. The search continues, with huge lights illuminating the wreckage and cranes looming over the scene.
It is quiet, and there is a sense of resolve, but there’s also a feeling of resignation. Something terrible happened here, and time can’t be reversed.
It feels so horrendously bizarre, so lit up against the night sky, that it could even be a film set. But, of course, it’s actually something desperate and ghastly. The evidence of a crash that should never have happened.
Because amid the despair there is also recrimination and a simmering desire for a reckoning. This was not a disaster that came as an absolute surprise to some in Greece, for the shoddy state of the nation’s small railway network has long been a source of contention.
Just a month ago, one of the rail unions warned that underinvestment had raised the spectre of a serious crash. The president of the rail regulator said signalling systems were still reliant on being operated manually, leaving them open to “human error”.
And so it was, here in northern Greece, that a passenger train emerged from a tunnel to smash head-first into a freight train coming in the opposite direction, along the same line.
Does the blame lay with one person, or is it the result of underinvestment?
If you run a railway, there cannot be a more fundamental failing than this. Just a matter of hours after the crash, the police arrested the station master from Larissa train station, charging him with a range of crimes, including multiple counts of manslaughter.
But already, across Greece, a debate has begun as to whether this is truly the responsibility of a single person, or simply the inevitable result of a failing network that is, by comparison with other European railway networks, outdated and open to human error.
Outside Larissa station, some hours after the station master is arrested, there is a vigil organised by students. Candles are lit and prayers are muttered. “I feel sad, and angry, about what has happened,” one of the students tells me, adding: “But I also know that I am lucky. I use that train. It could have been me on there.”
Another tells me there needs to be a full investigation, and that he feels a sense of disbelief. He doesn’t know when he will want to use the train service again.
This is a nation that has entered a period of national mourning. Train workers will stop work to register both respect towards the dead, and anger at what they see as a lack of investment. And the prosecutor will soon start to question the station master accused of causing all this death.
Disasters – especially avoidable disasters, and particularly train crashes – are followed by periods of introspection and doubt. But in this case, there is no question it is needed.
There is no excuse for what happened here, no excuse for the devastation that litters this field, for the dead, the dying and the injured.
It shouldn’t have happened. The challenge for Greece is how to ensure that it never happens again.
The fast-moving developments on Trump’s Ukraine peace deal are dominating the G20 summit in South Africa, as European leaders scramble to put together a counter-proposal to the US-Russia 28-point plan and reinsert Ukraine into these discussions.
European countries are now working up proposals to put to President Trump ahead of his deadline of Thursday to agree a deal.
Ukraine is in a tight spot. It cannot reject Washington outright – it relies on US military support to continue this war – but neither can it accept the terms of a deal that is acutely favourable to Russia, requiring Ukraine to give up territory not even occupied by Moscow and reducing its army.
Overnight, the UK government has reiterated its position that any deal must deliver a “just and lasting peace”.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv to discuss ending war in talks in Switzerland
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Keir Starmer calls for growth plan at G20
The prime minister, who spoke with E3 allies President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine on the phone on Friday, is having more conversations today with key partners as they work out how to handle Trump and improve this deal for Ukraine.
One diplomatic source told me allies are being very careful not to criticise Trump or his approach for fear of exacerbating an already delicate situation.
Instead, the prime minister is directing his attacks at Russia.
Read more:
Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full
Analysis: We could all pay if Europe doesn’t guarantee Ukraine’s security
Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a plenary session on the first day of the G20 Leaders’ Summit. Pic: Reuters
“There is only one country around the G20 table that is not calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and one country that is deploying a barrage of drones and missiles to destroy livelihoods and murder innocent civilians,” he said on Friday evening.
“Time and again, Russia pretends to be serious about peace, but its actions never live up to its words.”
Pic: AP
On the Trump plan, the prime minister said allies are meetin on Saturday “to discuss the current proposal on the table, and in support of Trump’s push for peace, look at how we can strengthen this plan for the next phase of negotiations”.
Strengthening the plan really means that they want to rebalance it towards Ukraine’s position and make it tougher on Russia.
“Ukraine has been ready to negotiate for months, while Russia has stalled and continued its murderous rampage. That is why we must all work together with both the US and Ukraine, to secure a just and lasting peace once and for all,” said the prime minister.
“We will continue to coordinate closely with Washington and Kyiv to achieve that. However, we cannot simply wait for peace.
“We must strain every sinew to secure it. We must cut off Putin’s finance flows by ending our reliance on Russian gas. It won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Pic: AP
Europeans hadn’t even seen this deal earlier in the week, in a sign that the US is cutting other allies out of negotiations – for now at least.
Starmer and other European leaders want to get to a position where Ukraine and Europe are at least at the table.
There is some discussion about whether European leaders such as Macron and Meloni might travel to Washington to speak to Trump early next week in order to persuade him of the European and Ukrainian perspective, as leaders did last August following the US-Russian summit in Alaska.
But Sky News understands there are no discussions about the PM travelling to Washington next week ahead of the budget.
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