Clashes break out in Greece after deadly train crash
Families and friends, dressed in black, clung to each other, in tears, as the coffin of a 34-year-old mother killed in Greece's deadliest train crash was lifted up the stairs of a church on Friday.
The first known funeral after Tuesday night's accident, which killed at least 57, took place in the northern town of Katerini, as police said 52 bodies had so far been identified - almost all from DNA tests as the crash was so violent.
Carriages were thrown off the tracks, some of them crushed and engulfed in flames, when a passenger train and one carrying freight collided on the same track at high speed in central Greece.
There were more than 350 people on board the passenger train, many of them university students going back to the northern town of Thessaloniki from the capital Athens after a long holiday weekend.
Anger has grown across the country over the crash, which the government has attributed to human error but which unions say was inevitable due to lack of maintenance and faulty signaling.
After evening protests over the past two days, some 2,000 students took to the streets in Athens on Friday, blocking the road in front of parliament for a moment of silence.
Clashes broke out with some protesters who threw petrol bombs and set garbage bins on fire. Police responded with volleys of teargas.
Students also demonstrated in Larissa, the central city near where the crash took place.
MG
