At least 32 people have died and dozens more were injured in the head-on collision between two trains near the city of Larissa on Tuesday night, reports the BBC.
Rescuers have been working through the night to find survivors.
The passenger train had been travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki when it crashed head-on with the other freight train, leading to a fire in at least one of the carriages.
It is being described as the worst train crash Greece has ever seen, but the cause of the collision is not yet known.
About 150 firefighters and 40 ambulances were at the scene, Greek emergency services said, with cranes also used to remove debris.
"It was a very powerful collision," the regional governor of the Thessaly region, Kostas Agorastos, told state-run television.
"This is a terrible night... It's hard to describe the scene."
He said the first four carriages of the passenger train were derailed, and the first two carriages caught fire and were "almost completely destroyed".
They were travelling at great speed and one (driver) didn't know the other was coming," the governor said.
Footage of the collision's aftermath showed thick plumes of smoke rising from derailed carriages.
Conditions for rescue workers were "very difficult" because of "the severity of the collision", fire service spokesman Vassilis Varthakoyiannis told reporters.
"I've never seen anything like this in my entire life. It's tragic. Five hours later, we are finding bodies," an exhausted rescuer emerging from the wreckage told AFP news agency.
"We are living through a tragedy. We are pulling out people alive, injured... there are dead. We are going to be here all night, until we finish, until we find the last person," another volunteer rescue worker told ERT state broadcaster in comments cited by Reuters.
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