{"id":18321,"date":"2010-04-10T12:01:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T10:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=18321"},"modified":"2013-10-13T00:08:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T21:08:39","slug":"polish-president-lech-kaczynski-in-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/04\/10\/polish-president-lech-kaczynski-in-plane-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Polish President Lech Kaczynski ‘in plane crash’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and scores of others are believed to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Lech<\/strong><\/p>\n

Officials in the Smolensk region said no-one had survived after the plane apparently hit trees as it came in for landing in thick fog.<\/p>\n

Several other government figures, including the army chief of staff, were also thought to have been on board.<\/p>\n

They were in Russia to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when the Soviets killed thousands of Poles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The BBC’s Adam Easton in Warsaw says the crash is a catastrophe for the Polish people.<\/p>\n

He says Prime Minister Donald Tusk was reportedly in tears when he was told.<\/p>\n

Plane ‘hit trees’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Russian emergencies ministry told Itar-Tass news agency the plane crashed at 1056 Moscow time (0656 GMT).<\/p>\n

Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said it had been flying from Moscow to Smolensk, but had no details on the identities of those killed.<\/p>\n

Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufiev told Russian TV that no-one had survived.<\/p>\n

“As it was preparing for landing, the Polish president’s aircraft did not make it to the landing strip,” he said.<\/p>\n

“According to preliminary reports, it got caught up in the tops of trees, fell to the ground and broke up into pieces. There are no survivors in that crash.<\/p>\n

“We are clarifying how many people there were in the [Polish] delegation. According to preliminary reports, 85 members of the delegation and the crew.”<\/p>\n

Russian investigators said there were a total of 132 people on the plane.<\/p>\n

\"Smolensk<\/p>\n

Controversial figure<\/strong><\/p>\n

The president was flying in a Tupolev 154, a plane that was designed in the 1960s and capable of carrying more than 100 passengers.<\/p>\n

Our correspondent says there had been calls for Polish leaders to upgrade their planes.<\/p>\n

As well as the president and his wife, Maria, a number of senior officials were also said to be on the passenger list.<\/p>\n

They included the army chief of staff Gen Franciszek Gagor, central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.<\/p>\n

Mr Kaczynski has been a controversial figure in Polish politics, advocating a right-wing Catholic agenda.<\/p>\n

He has opposed rapid free-market reforms and favoured retaining social welfare programmes.<\/p>\n

BBC<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and scores of others are believed to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia. Officials in the Smolensk region said no-one had survived after the plane apparently hit trees as it came in for landing in thick fog. Several other government figures, including the army chief of staff, were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,628,922],"tags":[2828,1906,2827],"class_list":["post-18321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eu-members","category-poland-eu-members-european-countries-english","category-world","tag-lech-kaczynski","tag-plane-crash","tag-polish-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}