Greece

9 Mar 2023; MEMO: Greece has sentenced a fisherman to 280 years in prison for steering a migrant boat in rough waters, finding him guilty on charges of human trafficking.

The 45-year-old Egyptian man, identified as H Elfallah, was with his 15-year-old son on board a battered former fishing vessel holding 500 migrants making their way across the Mediterranean in November last year.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Tens of thousands marched Wednesday in Athens and cities across Greece to protest the deaths of 57 people in the country’s worst train disaster, which exposed significant rail safety deficiencies.

Labor unions and student associations organized the demonstrations, while strikes halted ferries to the islands and public transportation services in Athens, where at least 30,000 people took part in the protest.

7 Mar 2023; MEMO: Greek authorities have stolen more than €2 million ($2.1 million) in cash or valuables from irregular migrants or refugees whom they had returned to Turkiye between 2017 to 2022, according to an investigation by Spanish daily El Pais.

ATHENS, March 5 (Reuters) - Clashes erupted briefly between police and a group of demonstrators in central Athens on Sunday on the fringes of a protest by thousands of students and railway workers over Greece's deadliest train crash in living memory.

A small group of protesters hurled petrol bombs at police, who responded with tear gas and hand grenades, before dispersing to nearby streets.

ATHENS, March 2 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from Tuesday night's train crash in central Greece has increased to 57, authorities said on Thursday.

Forty-eight people remain hospitalized, six of them in intensive care, Greek police spokeswoman Konstantia Dimoglidou told journalists.

A search and rescue operation is expected to conclude on Friday, Greek Fire Service spokesman Vasilios Vathrakogiannis added.

LARISSA, Greece (AP) — Authorities in Greece said Friday that all remains recovered so far from scene of this week’s rail disaster have been accounted for, with the death toll from the crash remaining at 57.

The bodies of victims from Tuesday’s head-on train collision were being returned to families in closed caskets after DNA matches were confirmed.

Recovery teams were scouring the wreckage for a third day at Tempe, 380 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens, where a passenger train slammed into a freight carrier, causing the deadliest rail accident in Greece’s history.

LARISSA, Greece, March 2 (Reuters) - Anger and sorrow grew in Greece on Thursday over a devastating train crash that killed dozens of passengers along with crew members near the central city of Larissa in the country's worst rail disaster.

Carriages were thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train on Tuesday. They were on the same track.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Emergency crews cut trough the mangled metal paneling of a passenger train on Thursday, progressing “centimeter by centimeter” in their efforts to pull more bodies from the burned wreckage of a head-on collision in northern Greece that left at least 43 people dead. Rail workers went on strike to protest years of underfunding they say has left the country’s rail system in a dangerous state.

1 Mar 2023; MEMO: Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, extended his condolences to Greece on Wednesday over a fatal train crash that has claimed the lives of dozens, Reuters reports.

TEMPE, Greece (AP) — A passenger train carrying hundreds of people collided at high speed with an oncoming freight train in a fiery wreck in northern Greece, killing 32 and injuring at least 85, officials said Wednesday.

Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision near the town of Tempe on Tuesday just before midnight. Rescue crews illuminated the scene with floodlights before dawn on Wednesday as they searched frantically through the twisted, smoking wreckage for survivors.