Thousands protest in Athens over deadly train crash

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STORY: Among the crowd of some 10,000, which included students and other groups, were many railway workers.

Railway worker Vassiliki Svarna told Reuters:

"We feel unspeakable grief over the incident, it is tragic, we cannot soothe the pain of the families who lost their kids nor can we bring them back, but we are here, so that nothing remains in darkness, for everything to be revealed, to the bone, for those responsible to pay, those who have left the railway to its fate, all the governments for all these years."

"Despite the continuous warnings of the workers there was criminal indifference by those responsible to our requests over the safety systems and that is what led to this tragic accident," said head of the railway drivers union Kostas Genidounias.

Railway workers, who also lost colleagues in the accident, have staged rotating walkouts since Wednesday to denounce cost-cutting and underinvestment in the rail infrastructure, a legacy of Greece's debilitating debt crisis from 2010 to 2018.

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