The accident comes eight days after a construction crane caught fire and crashed into a Manhattan street, injuring six and snarling traffic through the nearby Lincoln Tunnel to New Jersey.

The disaster struck when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore in the eastern state of Odisha.

Investigations indicated the Coromandel Express moved off the main line and entered a loop track – a side track used to park trains – at 128kph, crashing into the stationary freight train.

This crash ranks as India's third-worst, and the deadliest since 1995.

Carriages had flipped over entirely and rescue workers searched to pull out survivors trapped in the mangled wreckage, with scores of bodies laid out under white sheets beside the tracks.

At least 19 have been taken to hospital.

The protests were accompanied by a 24-hour strike – the biggest yet since the disaster – this time called by Greece's leading private as well as public sector unions.

The accident occurred when a passenger train entering Qalyub station went through a stop signal.

The train, travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki, was packed with university students returning after a long holiday weekend.

Police clashed with some of the demonstrators at a handful of protests, as public anger grew over the role that government mismanagement played in the tragedy.

Carriages were thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames when a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train.

Recent violence in New York City's subways has left residents on edge amid a surge in crime.