Seemingly peaceful protests in Greece have escalated into violence. Clashes erupted in Athens' central Syntagma Square, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered across Greece to demand justice on the second anniversary of the country's deadliest train crash that killed 57 people.
In Athens, the protest turned violent when a group of hooded youths threw petrol bombs at police and tried to break down barricades in front of parliament. Police responded by firing tear gas around the protest perimeter. The center-right government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis denies interfering in the investigation and says it is up to the judiciary to investigate the accident.
"The government has done nothing to bring justice," said Christos Main, 57, at the Athens rally. "This was not an accident, it was murder," he said.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in a post on the second anniversary of the Tempi accident, emphasizes that on the night of the tragedy "we saw the ugliest face of the country in the national mirror". Everyone's thoughts are with the families of the 57 victims. With the injured. "But also with those who survived this accident, forever carrying within themselves the wound of its memory", writes the prime minister, in a reaction on Facebook.
Friday's protests reflected growing anger over the disaster in Greece, where distrust of the government is common after a 2009-2018 debt crisis in which millions lost wages and pensions, and public services suffered from underfunding.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which won re-election after being ousted in 2023, has faced repeated criticism from the victims' families for failing to launch a parliamentary investigation into political responsibility.
Fifty-seven people were killed when a passenger train packed with students collided with a freight train on February 28, 2023, near the Tempi gorge in central Greece. Two years later, safety gaps that caused the crash have not been filled, an investigation found on Thursday. A separate judicial investigation remains unfinished and no one has been convicted over the accident, fueling popular anger. Demonstrations were held in cities and towns across Greece in one of the country's biggest protests in years.
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