At least 36 people were killed and several injured in a deadly train collision occurred in Greece on Tuesday. The head-on collision involved a passenger train and a cargo train, causing entire carriages to derail and some to catch fire.

According to Reuters, Hellenic Train reflected that the passenger train was carrying 342 travellers, many of whom were students, and 10 crew, while two crew were on the cargo train. Sixty-six of those injured were hospitalised, six of whom in intensive care, a fire brigade official said.

Passengers described the crash as "nightmarish" and some had to kick through windows to escape the flames. One passenger said that "fire was right and left" as they turned over. The death toll is expected to rise as temperatures in one carriage rose to 1,300 Celsius, Reuters reported.

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The accident occurred near the central town of Larissa, as the passenger train was headed to the northern city of Thessaloniki from the capital Athens, after a long holiday weekend.

”There was panic … the fire was immediate, as we were turning over we were being burned, fire was right and left,” said Stergios Minenis, a 28-year-old passenger who jumped to safety from the wreckage.

Another passenger, who escaped from the fifth carriage, told Skai TV: ”Windows were being smashed and people were screaming … One of the windows caved in from the impact of iron from the other train.”

Fire brigade spokesman Vassilis Varthakogiannis said the temperatures in the first carriage made it hard to identify those trapped inside, or say how many died exactly.

”The confirmed number of dead is 36 but based on these facts, and the findings from the scene of the tragedy, the number is expected to be greater,” Reuters quoted the Fire brigade spokesman as saying.

The head of the emergency unit in Larissa hospital, Apostolos Komnos, said most of the dead were young people, in their 20s.

The two trains had been running towards each other on the same track ”for many kilometres” before the crash, government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou said. Yiannis Ditsas, head of the Greek railway workers union, told Skai television that automatic signalling at the spot of the crash had not been working. There was no immediate official comment on this.

A station master has been arrested as investigators try to understand why the two trains had been on the same track. Flags flew at half-mast in Athens and Brussels as a tribute to the victims, and the government declared three days of national mourning.

A police official said that the local station master, in charge of signalling, has been arrested and charged with causing mass deaths through negligence as investigators try to understand why the two trains had been on the same track. However the 59-year-old man has denied any responsibility for the accident, attributing it to a possible technical failure, the official added.

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Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis has submitted his resignation, taking responsibility for the state's "long-standing failures" to fix a railway system he said was not fit for the 21st century.

Expressing grief over the incident, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at the site of the crash, "It’s an unthinkable tragedy. Our thoughts today are with the relatives of the victims."

(Edited by : Anushka Sharma)