Education World

Thousands of Poles gathered in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on Saturday to lay flowers and light candles in honor of Polish President Lech Saczynski and the country’s ruling elite killed in a plane crash in western Russia.

The 26-year-old Tupolev Tu-154 was enroute from Warsaw to Smolensk, Russia on Saturday morning, when it went down in thick fog with the president, his wife, the army chief of staff, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and the central bank governor aboard, said Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski.

Russia’s Emergency Ministry said that 96 people were killed, including a delegation of 88 Poles headed to Russia to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers.

Hours after the crash,the Polish government announced that there would be a presidential election before June in line with the country’s constitution.

Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski took over presidential duties and declared a week of mourning.

All the bodies of the victims have been found and the body of the Polish president has been identified by his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the crash as “the most tragic event of the country’s post-war history.” He has decided to scrap a visit to the United States on Monday for a nuclear security summit.

“Following the air disaster near Smolensk, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has canceled his visits to Washington and Canada scheduled for next week,” the government press office said.

In a television address to the Polish people on Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced April 12 a day of national mourning for the victims of the plane crash.

Medvedev stressed that he had ordered a thorough investigation into the causes of the crash.

“This work will be done in close interaction with corresponding Polish structures and agencies,” he said. “All instructions have been given to this end.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has established an investigation committee and later mourned with his Polish counterpart at the crash site.

The bodies of the crash victims would be sent to Moscow for identification, and a special center would be established to help the victims’ relatives from Poland, Putin said.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s investigations committee has opened investigation into the crash.

“The investigation is looking into various theories…including unfavorable weather, human error, and technical malfunctions,” the committee said in a statement.

Kaczynski, 60, took office after winning an election run-off in October, 2005. Before that, he had been mayor of Warsaw, Poland’s capital.

He is the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski died in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

He had been the country’s prosecutor-general and justice minister in a previous center-right government before being elected Warsaw mayor in 2002.

Kaczynski became well known for banning gay pride parades in Warsaw in 2004 and 2005, citing a lack of necessary documentation by organizers as the reason.

Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw formed the socially conservative Law and Justice party in 2001 under the banner of developing the country’s education and economy, fighting corruption and reforming rural areas.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service.