Polish Olympic Committee head dies in Kaczynski plane crash

Warsaw: Piotr Nurowski, head of Poland’s Olympic Committee, died in the plane crash in Russia which also killed his country’s President Lech Kaczynski and other officials, the committee said.

The 65-year-old Nurowski “was also among the people who were on board the plane,” the committee announced in a statement. Nurowski, Kaczynski and his wife as well as other officials died as their plane crashed during a landing in the western Russian city of Smolensk on Saturday morning. They were due to attend ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the WWII Soviet slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers in the nearby Katyn Forest and elsewhere in Russia and Ukraine.“In the name of the Polish Olympic family, the committee president was expected to lay flowers on the graves of Polish Olympic champions killed in Katyn in 1940,” the statement read. Bureau Report