The death toll from Tuesday’s train crash in Greece has increased to 57, a coroner has told the BBC.
Eleni Zaggelidou, one of ten coroners working on the investigation, said DNA had been taken from 57 intact bodies.
A government minister said austerity during Greece’s economic crisis in the 2000s had contributed to a lack of investment in the railways.
Rail workers held a one-day strike on Thursday following the disaster, blaming government neglect.
More than 2,000 people protested for a second day in Athens and Thessaloniki, shocked by the disaster near the city of Larissa.
“We are angry at the company, at the government and past governments that did nothing to improve conditions in the Greek railway,” said pensioner Stavros Nantis in Athens.
Rescue workers are still going through burned and buckled carriages, searching for victims.
This was the “most difficult moment”, rescuer Konstantinos Imanimidis told Reuters news agency, because “instead of saving lives, we have to recover bodies”.
A passenger service carrying 350 people collided with a freight train just before midnight on Tuesday after they ended up on the same track – causing the front carriages to burst into flames.
The railway workers’ strike began at 06:00 local time (04:00 GMT), hitting national rail services and the subway in Athens.
Many in Greece see the crash as an accident that had been waiting to happen, and the union blamed successive governments’ “disrespect” towards Greek railways for leading to this “tragic result”. (BBC)