A 20-year-old Greek student has been hailed as a hero after he reportedly managed to save at least 10 people from a burning carriage after two trains collided head-on in Greece’s worst ever train disaster, it emerged on Thursday.
At least 43 mostly young people were killed when a passenger train travelling from Athens to Thessaloniki with more than 350 people on board smashed head first into a freight train that was on the same track going in the opposite direction.
But a doctor at nearby Larissa hospital said that death toll would have been higher had it not been for “angel” Andreas Alikaniotis.
The 20-year-old reportedly managed to break a window in one of the carriages and help save his fellow passengers.
“Although the sky was filled with angels today, we are lucky to have an earthly angel among us, the 20-year-old student Andreas Alikaniotis.
“He is a hero because at the risk of his life, with the huge fire next to him, he did not abandon the carriage but broke the glass and saved at least ten (passengers),” the doctor from Larissa University Hospital wrote on Facebook.
Among those killed in the disaster were 20-year-old twins Thomi and Chrysa Plakias and their cousin Anastasia Plakias.
The fathers of the twins and their cousin, Nikos and Dimitris Plakias, who run a tavern in the central Greek village of Kastraki, travelled to Larissa to provide DNA to help identify the bodies on Wednesday.
Rescuers and doctors are having to resort to such techniques because many of the victims of the crash were so badly burnt in the tragedy.
The first two carriages of the passenger train were engulfed in flames upon impact, with temperatures reaching 1,300 degrees Celsius and practically disintegrating.
Many of the passengers were students who were returning to Thessaloniki after spending a long weekend celebrating Greek Orthodox Lent.
Dozens of people were injured and the drivers of both trains were killed.
