Greece train crash: Thousands of protesters call for investment in transport system

Tens of thousands of people have taken part in protests and strikes in Greece, in a show of anger over last week's train crash which killed 57 people.

Riot police used tear gas on a group of demonstrators in Athens - some of whom threw petrol bombs.

Police also intervened in protests in the city of Thessaloniki.

The government has been accused of mismanagement after the head on collision between a passenger train and a freight train on 28 February.

"I am here to pay tribute to the dead but also to express my anger and my frustration," one protester in Athens told AFP on Wednesday. "This government must go."

"You feel angry because the government did nothing for all of those kids," another told Reuters, referring to the fact that many of the 350 people onboard the train were students.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is facing re-election this year, has come under mounting pressure to resign over the country's deadliest rail crash on record.

He and his government have been criticised for trying to shift the blame for the crash onto the station master who has been charged with manslaughter.

Doctors, teachers, bus drivers and ferry crew members were among those to strike on Wednesday.

They joined rail workers, who have been staging rolling protests since the crash.

Train drivers have said they told the government about the long-running problems with the electronic systems that are supposed to warn of danger ahead.

"We drivers have filed complaints about these things, we have gone on strike about it... but unfortunately no one listened to us," the head of the Greek train drivers union, Kostas Genidounias, has said.

"They told us we were lying, we were slanderous, we had other interests, in the end it showed that the workers were right and unfortunately we experienced this tragedy."

Greece's new transport minister, George Gerapetritis, who was appointed after his predecessor quit following the crash, has promised the government will fix what he described as the country's "chronically ill train transport system". He promised no train would set off again without "safety at the maximum possible level".

He also said that "accidents will happen" and that human error, which the government has largely blamed for the crash, will occur even with an electronic system.

In Thessaloniki, where the train had been travelling to when it crashed, police fired tear gas at some people throwing stones outside the local railway station.

"It could have been any of us," said one student. "In this country, it seems that we live by luck these days.

Things have to change without a doubt and I feel just outraged with what has happened."