[Source: Reuters]

Protesters hurled petrol bombs and set fire to trash cans in Athens on Friday as hundreds of thousands of Greeks went on strike and took to the streets in nationwide demonstrations on the second anniversary of the country’s deadliest train crash.

Fifty-seven people were killed when a passenger train filled with students collided with a freight train on February 28, 2023 in central Greece.

The accident has become a painful emblem of the perceived neglect of the country’s infrastructure in the decades before the crash and the two years since.

“The government hasn’t done anything to get justice,” said Christos Main, 57, a musician at the Athens rally. “This wasn’t an accident, it was murder,” he said.

In one of the biggest protests in Greece in years, public services and many private businesses were brought to a halt and people poured into the streets of cities and towns chanting “murderers” against what they say is the state’s role in the disaster.

The government denies wrongdoing.

A sea of people descended onto Athens’ Syntagma Square in front of parliament, where protesters spray-painted the names of the dead in red on the ground.

The slogan “I have no oxygen” – a woman’s last words in a call to emergency services – echoed in chants across the country.

The Athens protest was peaceful until a group of hooded youths hurled petrol bombs at police and tried to storm the barricades of the parliament building. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon and cat-and-mouse clashes then spread into the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Clashes also broke out in Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, where a giant crowd choked the centre and people released black balloons into the sky in memory of the dead.

More than 80 people were detained and five were injured in Athens alone, authorities said.

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