Greek Train Crash: Anger Grows As Death Toll Reaches 57

As anger mounts over the loss of life in Tuesday night's train crash, thousands of Greeks took to the streets for a second day of protests.

It was one of the country's worst train crashes in recent years, and the death toll has reached 57, reported CNN.

Even though it was raining heavily, demonstrators marched from the office headquarters of the Hellenic Train in Athens to the Greek parliament. They chanted, "this crime will not be forgotten."

Tear gas was used to disperse protesters, who lit fires in the streets and threw stones.

Many of them were as young as the majority of those who were killed in the collision between a passenger and a freight train on Tuesday evening in Tempi, near Larissa.

Almost all were students who were killed in the crash, reported The Guardian.

Authorities announced on Thursday that apart from those who died, 56 people on the passenger list were still missing.

Stelios Dormarazoglou, one of the protesters, said that authorities will try to "cover it up but we're not going to let them."

He shared that everyone knows that if the Greek state had wanted, the accident "could have been prevented." His son worked on upgrading the signaling system nine years ago, and ever since it's been stalled because "companies are only ever interested in profits."

People took streets hours after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' government conceded that rail projects nationwide had been beset by "chronic public sector ills."

In the first public admission of the problems affecting the Greek railway network, officials said that efforts to overhaul the system had failed.

Giannis Oikonomou, a government spokesperson, said that they are "all devastated by this tragic incident."

Zoe Rapti, Greece's deputy minister of health, visited a hospital where relatives of the missing had gathered.

She told BBC that investing in the rail network had been made more difficult due to the Greek debt crisis more than 10 years ago.

It led to drastic austerity measures in exchange for a financial rescue by the EU as well as International Monetary Fund.

But she said that a "wide investigation" would happen which she promised would provide answers.