Protests have erupted in Greece over a train crash that killed 43 people in what many see as an accident waiting to happen.
Rioters clashed with police outside the headquarters of Hellenic Train in Athens, the company responsible for maintaining Greece’s railways.
Protests were also held in Thessaloniki and the city of Larisa, near which the disaster occurred on Tuesday night.
The government said an independent investigation would bring justice.
Three days of national mourning have been declared across the country following an incident in which a passenger service crashed head-on into a freight train, causing the front carriages to burst into flames.
The front cars of the passenger train are mostly gutted.
Many of the 350 passengers on board were students in their 20s returning to Thessaloniki after the Greek Orthodox Church’s long Lent weekend.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that the cause of the disaster was “tragic human error”.
In Larisa, the 59-year-old station chief is accused of negligent homicide. He denies any wrongdoing, blaming the accident on a technical fault.
Members of the railroad workers’ union believe that the safety systems were not working properly, and have repeatedly warned about this over the years.
In protest and mourning, railway workers plan to strike on Thursday over what they say is official neglect of the railway.
“Pain has turned into anger for dozens of dead and injured colleagues and fellow citizens,” said the statement of the workers’ union, which announced the strike.
“The disrespect shown by governments over the years to Greek railways has led to a tragic outcome,” added the comments, quoted by the Reuters news agency.
Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned in the wake of the disaster, saying he would take responsibility for the authorities’ “continued failures” to fix a rail system he said was not fit for the 21st century.
But outside the hospital where the bodies of the train crash victims were taken, a banner was put up saying that any system failures would be covered up during the official investigation, which is now underway.
During a moment of silence in Larisa on Wednesday to honor the memory of the victims of the incident, one demonstrator said he believed the disaster was only a matter of time.
“The rail network looked problematic, with worn-out and poorly paid staff,” Nicos Savva, a medical student from Cyprus, told AFP.
The arrested station chief should not pay the price of the “whole sick system”, he added.
“This is an unacceptable accident. We have known this situation for 30 years,” Larissa doctor Kostas Bargiotas told AFP.
A vigil was also held in Athens near the Hellenic Train office. Later that day, violence broke out in the same area, with police firing tear gas to disperse protesters who threw stones and lit bonfires in the streets.
At the site of the worst railway accident in the country, rescuers worked all night again.
Families arrive at a nearby hospital to provide DNA samples so that their missing loved ones can be identified.
But it will become an increasingly difficult process as more remains are recovered from those at the front of the passenger train who bore the brunt of the head-on collision and the fire that then engulfed their carriages.
Fire brigade spokesman Vassilis Vartakogiannis said the temperature inside the first carriage reached 1300C (2370F), making it “difficult to identify the people who were inside”.
