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Plane crash after safety conference kills 20 in Poland

A military plane carrying officers home from a flight-safety conference crashed in a forested area in northwestern Poland, killing all 20 people on board, the prime minister said early yesterday.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the victims of the crash, which occurred as the plane was about to land on Wednesday evening, included a brigadier-general and a colonel and was a "huge loss for the Polish air force."

"Soldiers, husbands and fathers have died, and that is the most tragic result of this catastrophe," said Tusk, who had rushed to the site of the accident.

The plane carrying 16 passengers and four crew members was approaching an air force airstrip at Miroslawiec shortly after 7pm when it crashed.

The aircraft, a Spanish-built CASA C-295M military transport plane, was about 3km from the airstrip when it clipped trees on its approach, crashed in a wooded area and burst into flames, officials said.

Tusk said rescue workers were still looking for the black box in their effort to clarify what went wrong.

The plane had 25 people on board when it took off from Warsaw, but had already landed at two other military airports -- in Powidz and Krzesiny, near Poznan -- to return some to their home bases. It had been scheduled to make one more stop in the northwestern city of Swidwin before returning to base in Krakow.

Polish media described the accident as the worst military disaster in more than three decades, and Polish President Lech Kaczynski, on a visit to Croatia, was cutting short his trip to return to Poland yesterday.
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