Poland paid an emotional tribute on Saturday to President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and 94 other mostly senior political and military officials killed in a plane crash a week ago in Russia. Up to 100,000 mourners, many clutching red-and-white national flags threaded with black ribbons, packed into the vast Pilsudski Square in central Warsaw to commemorate the victims of the country's most devastating accident since World War Two.
-- Up to 100,000 mourners attend Warsaw commemoration
-- State funeral for Kaczynskis set for Sunday in Krakow
"They all had their dreams and hopes for the future of their homeland. This is a serious test for us to understand those hopes well and take them into the future," Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who had been a political rival of Kaczynski's, told the crowd. "This is the most we can do for them. We are here to remember them. Poland is here to remember them. We will not forget," Tusk said. Behind him on the podium a tall, white cross rose up between two large black panels bearing the portraits of all the dead, whose names an actor read out one by one.
Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw, a former prime minister who now heads Poland's main opposition party, sat at the front of the mourners with other family members, including the president's daughter Marta, 29. Kaczynski had two grandchildren. Saturday's commemoration, which included a three-gun salute and a Roman Catholic requiem mass, came a day before the planned burial of Kaczynski and his wife in the crypt of Wawel cathedral in the ancient capital of Krakow in southern Poland.
World leaders including US President Barack Obama were scheduled to attend the Wawel funeral. But a huge volcanic ash cloud drifting across Europe from Iceland has closed Polish airports and it was unclear how many would manage to come. Poland's meteorology institute said the cloud covered all of Polish territory on Saturday but would partly disperse by early Sunday.
The crash has stunned Poland. Tens of thousands lined the streets of Warsaw for the return of the coffins from Russia and the area in front of Kaczynski's palace in Warsaw's picturesque Old Town has been transformed into a shrine to the dead, bedecked with candles, flowers, crucifixes and national flags.
Presidential aide Jacek Sasin said 180,000 mourners had filed past the coffins since they went on public display in the palace on Tuesday. The coffins were to remain on display in Warsaw cathedral on Saturday night where many more people were expected to pay their respects. A military plane was due to transport the coffins to Krakow on Sunday morning, flying at an altitude of less than 5,000 metres because of the volcanic ash cloud.
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