CIS:No survivors in crash of Polish president's plane: official
Sat Apr 10 18:21:25 EST 2010
Sat Apr 10 08:21:25 UTC 2010
MOSCOW, April 10 AFP - There were no survivors in the crash of a plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski, according to a local official in the western Russian city where the plane crashed on Saturday.
"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."
Polish foreign ministry spokesman, Piotr Pszkowski, confirmed the president was on the plane.
"The plane scraped the tree tops, crashed and caught fire," he said on the private television channel TVN24.
"On board were the president, accompanied by his wife, the army chief of staff and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer," he said.
The plane, a Tupolev 154, had a capacity of up to 90 people, he added.