A Polish military plane carrying 20 passengers and crew crashed
in flames in northwestern Poland, killing all aboard including an
air force general, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday.
Polish military transport aircraft CASA C-295 is seen in this
undated file photo. Several Polish air force commanders were feared
killed on January 23 when their military plane with 19 people
aboard crashed on the way back from a conference on aviation
safety.?
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The plane, with 16 members of the Polish armed forces and four crew
members aboard, was approaching an air base at Miroslawiec shortly
after 7 p.m. Wednesday when it went down in a forested area,
officials said.
"Soldiers, husbands, and fathers have died, and that is the most
tragic result of this catastrophe," said Tusk. He called it a "huge
loss for the Polish air force."
The passengers, who were returning from a flight safety
conference, included air brigade commander Brig. Gen. Andrzej
Andrzejewski and Col. Jerzy Pilat, commander of the Miroslawiec
base, said Defense Minister Bogdan Klich. The military branches and
ranks of the other victims weren't immediately available.
Tusk said it particularly lamentable that the victims "were
returning to their units from a conference devoted" to flight
safety.
The Spanish-built CASA C-295M transport plane was about 2 miles
from the airstrip when it clipped trees on its approach, crashed
into a wooded area and burst into flames, officials said.
"We don't know what the cause of the crash was right now," Maj.
Bogdan Ziolkowski, a spokesman for the base, told The Associated
Press.
Tusk said emergency crews were still looking for the black box
in their effort to clarify what went wrong.
The plane had more people on board when it took off from Warsaw,
but had already landed at three other military airports. It had two
more planned stops in Swidwin and Krakow.
Polish media were describing the accident as one of the worst
military disasters in more than three decades. President Lech
Kaczynski was cutting short a visit to Croatia to return to Poland
on Thursday, a spokesman said.
A Polish military expert, Grzegorz Holdanowicz, said it was the
first air disaster involving a CASA C-295M, a plane he called one
of the safest in the Polish air force. The Polish military also
uses the plane type in Iraq and in Afghanistan, where it supports
the US-led operations.
The pilots of Wednesday's flight were from a transport squadron
based in Balice, near Krakow, that had flown in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the squadron spokesman, Cpt. Piotr Jaszczuk said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2008)
