Some 7,500 people, according to police, vented their anger in front of parliament in Athens on Sunday after a train crash in Greece that killed 57 people and blamed on human error as well as negligence on Greek railways, AFP reported.

Railway accident in GreecePhoto: Intime News/Athena Pictures/Shutterstock Editorial/Profimedia

Fierce clashes broke out between demonstrators in front of the parliament in Athens and the police. Demonstrators set fire to garbage cans and threw Molotov cocktails, and the police responded with tear gas and stun grenades in the center of the Greek capital, writes AFP, writes Agerpres. Demonstrators waving placards reading “Down with murderous governments” responded to the call of students, railway workers and civil servants in the context of the train and subway strike.

In front of the parliament, protesters released hundreds of black balloons into the sky in memory of the victims of a head-on collision between a passenger train connecting Athens and Thessaloniki and a freight train on Tuesday evening.

“We feel enormous anger. Greed, the lack of measures taken to protect passengers have led to the worst rail tragedy in our country,” Michalis Hasiotis, president of the accountants’ union, who joined the march, told AFP.

Also on Sunday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized to the families of the victims, while the entire country, shocked by the tragedy, is gripped with anger at the negligence and deficiencies on the railways that have been revealed by the accident.

It was reported about the poor condition of the railway network, various problems in the signaling system and safety on the railway, in the context of which the head of the station of Larissa, the city closest to the accident, admitted his responsibility.

“Nothing is going well in this country, hospitals are in agony, schools are closing, forests are burning… Who are they fooling?” said Nikos Tsikalakis, president of the railway union.

Not far from the protest, Greece’s prime minister attended a religious service at the capital’s cathedral in Athens, and churches across the country planned to pay tribute to the victims of what authorities called a “national tragedy.”

On Friday, angry protesters chanted “murderers” outside the Hellenic Train headquarters in the capital and painted the word in red letters on the facade of the building.