WARSAW: A week of national mourning has begun in Poland after the plane crash in which leader President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other senior public figures were killed.
A two-minute silence will be held at 11am today and President Kaczynski's body will arrived back in Poland later.
All 97 people on board were killed when the military plane crashed in thick fog near Smolensk in western Russia.
Reports said the pilots ignored pleas from air traffic controllers to divert to another airport.
Some 88 of the dead were members of a Polish state delegation to the nearby Katyn forest, scene of a Polish massacre during WW2.
A Polish parliament spokesman said elections will be called within two weeks.
Tens of thousands of people, many in tears, turned out on the streets of Warsaw yesterday, placing candles and flowers at the presidential palace.
In London, mourners gathered at St Andrew Bobola Roman Catholic Church in Shepherd's Bush, west London, to remember the Polish priest Bronislaw Gostomski, 62, who worked at the church and was among the dignitaries who died.
"Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said.
Source: http://www.geo.tv/World.htm
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