Survivors have told of a “nightmarish 10 seconds” as their train carriage overturned and was engulfed in flames in a crash in northern Greece.
At least 36 people were killed and dozens injured in a collision between two trains near the city of Larissa on Tuesday night.
Rescuers worked through the night to find survivors.
“We heard a big bang,” said 28-year-old passenger Stergios Minenis, who jumped to safety from the crash.
“We turned the carriage until we fell and until the commotion stopped. Then there was panic. Cables, fire. The fire was immediate. When we turned we were on fire. The fire was right and left,” Mr Minenis was quoted as saying. of the Reuters news agency.
“Within 10, 15 seconds it was chaos. Crashes, fires, cables hanging, broken windows, people screaming, people trapped.”
People described having to crawl through windows and broken glass as they tried to escape.
According to a shaken passenger who spoke to Skai television, “the windows suddenly exploded” and “people were screaming and scared”.
“Fortunately, we were able to open the doors and escape quickly. In the other carriages, they were unable to get out, and one carriage was burnt.”
Fellow passenger Angelos Tsiamouras told local media that the crash felt like an earthquake, while another named Lazos told Protothema newspaper: “I was not hurt, but I was covered in blood from other people who injured near me.”
The passenger train was traveling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki when it collided with another freight train, leading to a fire in at least one of the carriages.
It has been described as the worst train crash Greece has ever seen, but the cause of the crash is still unknown.
About 150 firefighters and 40 ambulances were at the scene, Greek emergency services said, with cranes also being used to remove debris.
“It was a very strong collision,” the regional governor of the Thessaly region, Kostas Agorastos, told state-run television.
“It was a terrible night … It’s hard to describe the scene.”
He said the first four carriages of the passenger train derailed, and the first two carriages caught fire and were “almost completely destroyed”.
“They were traveling at a high speed and one (driver) didn’t know the other was coming,” the governor said.
Footage of the aftermath of the crash showed thick plumes of smoke billowing from the derailed carriages.
Conditions for rescue workers were “very difficult” due to the “severity of the collision”, fire service spokesman Vassilis Varthakoyiannis told reporters.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my whole life. It’s sad. Five hours later, we found bodies,” a tired rescuer emerging from the wreckage told the AFP news agency.
“We are living through a tragedy. We are pulling people alive, injured … there are dead. We will be here all night, until it is over, until we find the last person,” another volunteer rescue worker said to the ERT state broadcaster in comments quoted by Reuters.