'No survivors' as Polish presidents plane crashes in Russia

[Greg McDonald]

News just in:

As many as 132 people, including Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other Polish officials, were killed when their plane crashed in bad weather as it came in to land at Smolensk airport in western Russia.

"It clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces," the governor of the Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiev, told Russia-24 television news network by telephone.

There were no survivors when the Tupolev 154 crashed, Antufiev said.

Earlier reports from Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported earlier 87 people had died, but several sources including Reuters were reporting as many as 132.

Polish foreign ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski said the Polish president, accompanied by his wife, the army chief of staff and Deputy Foreign Minsiter Andrzej Kremer were on board the plane.

The Governor of Poland's national bank, Slawomir Skrzypek, also died, and Bloomberg reported the Polish deputy speaker as among the dead.

The Polish government was to hold an extraordinary meeting later Saturday, Reuters reported.

Mr Kaczynski, the identical twin brother of former prime minister Jaroslaw, was on his way to attend commemorative ceremonies at the forest of Katyn in western Russia where 22,000 Poles were killed by Soviet troops 70 years ago.

The crash of his plane occurred three days after Putin and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, together attended a memorial for the victims of the massacre at Katyn.

The Putin-Tusk meeting there was seen as a huge symbolic advance in Russia's often thorny relations with Poland.

[Mark T]

As always, sad to see such a loss of life. I remember when this aircraft visited Sydney in March 2007 - it was great to see a Russian "three holer".

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