Saturday, April 10, 2010

Polish Plane Crashes in Thick Fog in Russia; All 97 Passengers Killed, Including Clerics

A plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and dozens of the country's top political, military, and religious leaders to the site of the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in World War II, crashed in Western Russia today (April 10, 2010), killing all 97 people on board, according to the New York Times website.

The plane tried to land in a thick fog, missing the runway and snagging treetops about half a mile from the airport in Smolensk, Russia, scattering chunks of flaming fuselage across a forest.

The crash occurred when Russia and Poland were beginning to come to terms with the killing of more than 20,000 members of Poland's elite officer corps in the same area in 1940 during World War II.

Among the 97 people killed in the crash were at least two Christian clerics: Orthodox Archbishop Miron Chodakowski of the Polish Military Vicariate, and Catholic Bishop Tadeusz Ploski, a chaplain for the Polish Army.

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