Today, all of Greece mourns. There are 38 confirmed dead and 72 injured in the older one railway tragedy that the country has ever known according to the latest update from the fire department. The dead reach 43, according to a statement by Mrs. Roubini Leontari, head of the forensic service of Larissa, while sources from the Ministry of Citizen Protection, the number of deaths rises to 44.

Of the 72 hospitalized passengers, 15 were discharged, while 57 passengers remain hospitalized, of which 6 are in the Intensive Care Unit.

Sta Tempe since last night, scenes of an ancient tragedy have been unfolding, with the rescuers constantly removing the bodies of the majority of young children who were returning after the three days to their schools in Thessaloniki. Scenes of insanity are recorded in hospitals, while relatives of those on board from all over the country collapse from agony and pain. The tragic accident led to resignation of the Minister of Transport Kostas Karamanliswhile in his speech o Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke of establishment of an independent and cross-party committee of experts which will investigate the causes of the fatal accident. At the same time, he announced that Minister of State Giorgos Gerapetritis takes over interim Minister of Transport after the resignation of Mr. Karamanlis, while at the same time making it known that the they submitted their resignations and the heads of OSE and ERGOSE.

The chronicle of the tragedy in detail

SKAI records the events from the first minute.

“Everyone get off the train.” 11.25 before midnight time stops in Tempe. The shapeless mass seen in the video below was once a wagon. With passengers.

“The train had bent a full 90 degrees. He had fallen off the cliff and was half hanging in the air. Burn all over. He had 5 wounded just where I was,” says a witness from the scene.

“I do not remember. I don’t remember anything,” says a girl.

“There were injured until blood was thrown on the head,” adds another passenger.

The passenger train Intercity 62 from Athens bound for Thessaloniki with 350 passengers and 10 staff collides head-on with a commercial train heading to Larissa with 2 staff.

Formless mass the front carriages – Flames and debris

The front cars are crushed and engulfed in flames, the others are derailed. In the second car was the cafeteria of the train filled with passengers.

“Car 1 and 2 do not exist. There are the wheels, which have been blown off, and the wreckage of the wagons,” states the District Governor, Konstantinos Agorastos.

The authorities are first notified by a passenger via 112.

The descriptions of the passengers are shocking

“We broke the glass. We faced a chaos,” reports a passenger.

The passengers try to save each other.

“I pulled everyone I could into the adjacent cabins. A girl tore her waist very badly. The other girl next to her had her leg amputated from the middle of the reed,” notes a 20-year-old injured person.

“The baby left the pram and got stuck and they were trying to find him.”

“Science fiction scenario. They didn’t know where their colleagues were. If they were people in the dark, let them shout, let the world not know where they are going and what has happened to them. There was a fire, we couldn’t get close,” he said SKAI is the president of EKAV workers of Thessaly.

As time passes, the worst fears are confirmed. There are dead and they are increasing by leaps and bounds.

“We had a continuous flow of bodies from one point to another, dead that is, and at the same time many new children with various injuries. One of my interns is Palestinian, he came and said to me: “I have twelve years to go to Gaza and I remembered it tonight,” he told SKAI and Mismatched show The Director of Orthopedics at Larissa General Hospital, Konstantinos Bargiotas.

The university and general hospital of Larissa are sinking. The Katerinis hospital, AHEPA and Gennimatas hospital receive minor injuries.

Citizens are desperately looking for their own people.

The first survivors arrive in Thessaloniki and fall into the arms of their own.

“It was very scary. “Mom, don’t hold me, I’m hit,” reports a passenger.

It is the deadliest railway accident in Greece. By order of the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Isidoros Dogiakos, the supervision of the entire preliminary investigation was assigned to the head of the Larissa Appeals Prosecutor’s Office.

What led to the unspeakable tragedy? The descriptions of the passengers are chilling.

At noon, the 59-year-old stationmaster of the OSE Larissa was arrested, accused, among others, of manslaughter.

“It is wrong, because if he had realized it, he would have stopped it. So the station master gave the wrong order, you say. (journalist) These will be found by the authorities. It is the mistake of the moment that happened what happened”, said the president of the Panhellenic Railway Federation, Yiannis Ditsas

“We will do everything we can to investigate the causes and not sweep anything under the carpet. Thank you very much”, said the former Minister of Transport, Kostas Karamanlis.

A few hours later, Kostas Karamanlis submitted his resignation.

“It is what I feel it is my duty to do as a minimal sign of respect to the memory of the people who left so unjustly and taking responsibility for the eternal mistakes of the Greek state and the political system”, emphasized Mr. Karamanlis.

More than 60 injured people remain in the hospitals, some of them seriously.

Since the morning, two voluntary blood donations are underway with the participation of hundreds of citizens

By decision of the prime minister, a three-day national mourning was declared with flags flying at half-mast. The funerals of the victims will be held at public expense.

The search and rescue operation is ongoing

As Mr. Vathrakogiannis said, the search and extrication operation at the scene of the railway accident is ongoing and will continue during the night, while he added that the forces, after completing their investigations in the carriage of the first class of the passenger train and in the car – restaurant, they now operate in the first passenger car of the second class. In addition, Mr. Vathrakogiannis emphasized that the identification process in the restaurant car was carried out under extreme conditions of high pyrothermal load of the order of 1300 degrees Celsius, which made the relevant process difficult.

“At this time, with the help of crane vehicles, the first train of the second carriage is being raised so that the rescue teams can attempt the entire width of the second carriage. Also, an effort is being made by other crane-carrying vehicles, in order to remove the two engines of the commercial train from the spot, in order to facilitate the work of investigation and extrication, but also to free the railway line”, pointed out Mr. Vathrakogiannis.

At this time, 72 firefighters with 24 vehicles, 3 teams of the Special Disaster Response Unit and 2 teams of the Special Forestry Operations Unit are operating, while the presence of the National Emergency Center is continuous.

At the same time, from the first moment, the Special Plan for the Management of Human Losses was activated by the general secretary of Civil Protection.

At the same time, the First Army and the Military Units of Thessaly were activated according to the alert protocol.

Also, the IKAROS Team of the Regional Fire Administration of Thessaly was activated with unmanned aircraft, for aerial surveillance, and all the Fire Services of Thessaly were put on general alert.

During the operation, 194 passengers were transported with 5 buses to Thessaloniki, with a sixth bus 20 passengers were transported to Larissa and 8 passengers were transported to Katerini.

For her part, the press representative of the Hellenic Police, police officer B’, Constantia Dimoglidou, said that at this time the process of identifying the victims who have been transferred to the Larissa General Hospital continues. For the biological identification process, 17 DNA samples have so far been taken from the bodies and 23 samples from relatives of the passengers.

Also, from the site of the accident, the collection of the personal belongings and luggage of the passengers continues by the forces of the Greek Police. At the same time, under the supervision of the competent prosecutor, pre-investigative material has been collected from the Larissa station office, at the scene of the accident and at other points of interest.

In addition, Mrs. Dimoglidou underlined that a 59-year-old citizen has been arrested by the Larissa Traffic Department, while the preliminary investigation continues.

In total, 70 police officers have been deployed to the scene of the accident and to the Larissa General Hospital. At the same time, relatives of the victims and the injured have headed to the hotels that have been allocated.

Finally, it is recalled that in addition to the psychologists who have been at the Larissa General Hospital since morning, a team of psychologists has been set up from the Psychosocial Support Hotline 10 306 and calls the relatives and families of the injured and victims in order to provide them with psychological support and guidance.