A passenger train carrying hundreds of people, including many university students returning home from holiday, collided at high speed with an oncoming freight train in a fiery wreck in northern Greece, killing at least 36 people and injuring some 85, officials said Wednesday.
Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision just before midnight Tuesday near the town of Tempe as the passenger train was emerging from a highway underpass.
Rescue crews illuminated the scene with floodlights before dawn on Wednesday as they searched frantically through the twisted, smoking wreckage for survivors.
After sunrise, they turned to heavy machinery that had been brought in to start moving large pieces of the trains. What appeared to be the passenger train's third carriage lay atop the crumpled remains of the first two, where emergency crews were directing their focus.
Agence France-Presse cited Greek emergency services as saying roughly 150 firefighters and 40 ambulances responded.
Officials said many of the passengers on the Athens to Thessaloniki train were university students returning home after celebrating Carnival over the long weekend.
"This is a terrible tragedy that is hard to comprehend," said Deputy Health Minister Mina Gaga. "I feel so sorry for the parents of these kids."
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was to visit the scene later in the day.
Survivors said several passengers were thrown through the windows of the train cars due to the impact. They said others fought to free themselves after the passenger train buckled, slamming into a field near a gorge about 235 miles north of Athens.
"There were many big pieces of steel," said Vassilis Polyzos, a local resident who said he was one of the first people on the scene. "The trains were completely destroyed, both passenger and freight trains."
He said dazed and disoriented people were escaping out of the train's rear cars as he arrived.
"People, naturally, were scared - very scared," he said. "They were looking around, searching; they didn't know where they were."
"It was a nightmare. ... I'm still shaking," a22-year-old passenger named Angelos told AFP. "Fortunately we were in the penultimate car and we got out alive. There was a fire in the first cars and complete panic. The collision was like a huge earthquake."
Eight rail employees were among those killed in the crash, including the two operators of the freight train and the two operators of the passenger train, according to Greek Railroad Workers Union President Yannis Nitsas.
The trains crashed just before the Vale of Tempe, a gorge that separates the regions of Thessaly and Macedonia.
Costas Agorastos, the regional governor of the Thessaly area, told Greece's Skai Television the two trains collided head on at high speed.
A teenage survivor who didn't give his name to reporters said that just before the crash, he felt a strong braking and saw sparks - then there was a sudden stop.