Poland marks Smolensk air crash 8th anniversary
Ruling party Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Sejm and Senate Speakers as well as government members took part in a roll of honour as part of Tuesday's nation-wide commemorations of the 8th anniversary of the Polish presidential plane crash in Smolensk, western Russia, on April 10, 2010.
The ceremony took place outside the Presidential Palace. The observances started with a morning mass at a Warsaw church after its participants walked to the Presidential Palace to lay flowers at plaques commemorating the victims of the air disaster which claimed the lives of 96 people, including the then President Lech Kaczynski and his wife.
On Tuesday morning, President Andrzej Duda paid tribute to the late presidential couple at the Wawel Cathedral crypt, the final resting place of Lech Kaczynski and Maria Kaczynska.
On Tuesday afternoon, a monument to the victims of the plane crash will be unveiled in Warsaw together with a stone marking the site of a future monument to the late President Lech Kaczynski.
The gathering is to be addressed by President Andrzej Duda and the governing party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The monument to the late President Lech Kaczynski will be erected in front of the Warsaw Garrison headquarters, by Pilsudskiego Square, while the monument to all the plane crash victims will be sited on Pilsudskiego Square itself.
The monument to the victims of the plane crash will be unveiled at 3.30 pm, and the stone at the site of the President Lech Kaczynski memorial at 4 pm.
On April 10, 2010, President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, the last President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski and dozens of senior government officials and military commanders were killed in the air disaster near Smolensk, western Russia. The delegation was on its way to Katyn to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the 1940 Katyn Massacre, during which around 22,000 Polish POWs were murdered at the hands of the Soviets. (PAP)
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