Conditions in the Larissa General Hospital after the Tempi train derailment were described by Palestinian orthopedic surgeon Hussam Naim, who was on duty that night.

“As soon as the first ambulances with the injured arrived, I realized that we are also dealing with new children and this was an additional burden for us. The images I first saw sincerely reminded me that I was in Gaza for a moment, because these are scenes taken from the war, exactly what I saw when I was in Gaza before. And that’s exactly what I told my manager, that I feel like I’m in Gaza,” commented the Palestinian doctor.

The hardest part, he said, was transporting the bodies to the hospital. “We could see that they were all young children under the age of 30. That in itself gave us a very emotional charge because so many young children were unfairly lost.”

Mr. Naim said that the scale of the tragedy was not realized until the first victims began to arrive.

“We looked at each other in the emergency room, we knew we were dealing with something very serious. We realized that we were dealing with a collision of two trains. We have a lot of wounded.” Doctors then organized themselves calmly and efficiently, he says, and small teams took each patient to assess their condition.

“Some kids, they were in the middle of nowhere, they asked about friends, they asked about relatives. Some children were still in shock, they could not speak, we tried to communicate with them, in general, at that moment the atmosphere was difficult, ”he concluded, pointing out that some young people remain in a state of shock.