Poland mourns President's death

Poles wept before their televisions, lowered flags to half-mast and taped black ribbons in their windows after hearing that President Lech Kaczynski and the upper echelons of the establishment lay dead in woods a short drive from the site of the Katyn forest massacre, where 22,000 Polish officers were killed by Soviet secret police in one of Poland’s greatest national traumas.

The crash of an ageing Russian airliner ravaged the top levels of Poland’s military, political and church elite, killing President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and dozens of other dignitaries as they travelled to a ceremony commemorating a slaughter that divided the two nations for seven decades.