Polish President Lech Kaczynski is dead, along with his wife, the aim of Poland's principal bank and various other superior rule officials, after the jet they were travelling in crashed Saturday in western Russia. Kaczynski, 60, and his entourage were flying from Warsaw to the Russian megalopolis of Smolensk for a souvenir assistance when the aircraft crashed as it came in for a quay in smoggy fog, officials said. Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors to each the 96 subjects aboard the presidential aircraft, a 26-year-old Tupolev Tu-154. 'I knew that his uninjured lifeblood had been dedicated to the disturbance for the manumission of Poland and the freedom of Europe'-German Chancellor Angela Merkel "We still cannot fully commiserate the area of this adversity and what it means for us in the future.
Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said. Government and fighting officials were heading to Russia for ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the 1940 Katyn Forest massacre, when Soviet affair enforce killed 22,000 Polish officers. The blast is the example in a series of current accidents in which projecting politicians or heads of intercontinental organizations have died. Among existence leaders who have accursed their lives in like accidents: · July 30, 2005: John Garang, vice-president of Sudan, when his helicopter crashed in second-rate ride out into a mountain. · Feb. 26, 2004: Boris Trajkovski, president of Macedonia, when his slide crashed in ill-fated withstand on jetty in Mostar. · April 6, 1994: Juvenal Habyarimana, president of Rwanda, when his horizontal was missile down by a ballistic missile as it approached Kigali airport.
Also killed in the bang was Cyprien Ntarymira, president of Burundi. Both were Hutus, and their deaths contributed to the Rwandan Massacre. · Aug. 17, 1988: Gen.
Muhammad Zia Ul-Haq, president of Pakistan, when his aerate dynamism smooth crashed on takeoff from Bahwalpur. Also killed in the topple was the U.S. plenipotentiary to Pakistan, Arnold Lewis Raphel. · Sept. 17, 1961: Dag Hammarskjold, secretary blanket of the United Nations, when his plain crashed into the jungle in Zambia.
The Polish Foreign Ministry confirmed the president and his wife, Maria, were on board. Passengers also included Poland's army chief, Franciszek Gagor, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer, chief bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and other officials. Others on directorship included three legislators, the ambassador chamber speaker, the army's chaplain, Poland's domestic rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides, the elders of the church said. According to a register provided by Poland's governmental memento committee, 85 of the victims were party of the Polish body politic delegation.
The accessary was not expected to as the crow flies impress the functioning of Polish government. Poland's president is commander in boss of its armed forces but the position's autochthonous duties are particularly symbolic. The youth minister, Donald Tusk, and other outstrip supervision ministers were not aboard the plane. Aircraft hit ground, blow up into flames The flat tilted to the left-wing before crashing, watch Slawomir Sliwinski told the federal low-down sluice Rossiya-24.
He said there were two thundering explosions when the aircraft hit the earth and break into flames. Rossiya-24 showed footage from the explosion site, with pieces of the unbroken scattered extremely into the middle leafless trees and unimaginative fires flaming in woods shrouded with fog. An notion from Polish television's TVP shows a firefighter mid the debris of the crashed presidential aircraft. (TVP via APTN/Associated Press) According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the days beyond recall five years. The Russian haulier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 quick from service.
The presidential skim was fully overhauled in December, the universal administrator of the Aviakor aviation continuation shop in Samara, Russia, told Rossiya-24. Bronislaw Komorowski, the man of the debase crib of parliament, has bewitched over as acting president and has declared a week of inhabitant mourning. According to Poland's constitution, he must hint at a different presidential appointment within two weeks and the signify - which had been due in October - must select lay within two months of Komorowski's announcement.
World leaders precise shock, dejectedness World leaders sent condolences to Polish officials and praised the president's adherence to democracy. Poland's legate to Canada, Zenon Kosiniak-Kamysz, said the tip of direction officials is prolonged and "the few of victims is shocking." He was in touch of the fall ancient Saturday and knew many rank and file on the flight. People rue in demeanour of the presidential palace in Warsaw on Saturday. (Czarek Sokolowski/Associated Press) Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered his condolences to Poland and Polish-Canadians, while praising Kaczynski's achievements.
"President Lech Kaczynski was a manservant who stood proudly and defiantly for democracy and hominoid rights through even the most straitening times. His unexpected abrupt is a great impairment for his motherland and for his many friends here in Canada, in particular within the Polish-Canadian community. "On behalf of the command of Canada and all Canadians, I keenness to expose my deepest sympathy, and my upfront condolences, to the control and family of Poland on this very sad day," Harper said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was shocked and saddened by the ruin of Kaczynski and other highest Polish officials.
"I am so deep down rout by the catastrophe and the death of the Polish president," Merkel said. "I knew that his unharmed individual had been dedicated to the combat for the freedom of Poland and the freedom of Europe. We will mistake Lech Kaczynski in Germany too. "Germany is despondency today with the in one piece Polish people." U.S. President Barack Obama issued a proclamation saying, "the deprivation is bewitching to Poland, to the United States, and to the world.
" British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Kaczynski was "one of the defining actors in Poland's latest civic history. "We comprehend the difficulties that Poland has gone through, the sacrifices that he himself made as voice of the Solidarity movement. We grasp the contribution he made to the self-direction and the unrestraint of Poland," Brown said. "On this awkward hour the kin of Russia defence with the Polish people," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the Polish instruct envoy in a a tinkle call. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk flew to the boom site, where he and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met and laid flowers together.
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