POLISH President Lech Kaczynski and his wife died yesterday along with dozens of others on a government delegation when their plane crashed while coming in for landing in western Russia, officials said.
The Governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11am their time, said no one survived.
''The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart,'' Sergei Anufriev said on state news channel Rossiya-24.
''Nobody has survived the disaster.''
The Polish Foreign Ministry confirmed that Mr Kaczynski and his wife were aboard the plane.
Russian television broadcast live footage showing the wreckage of the plane scattered in a forest with parts of it still on fire.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but reports said there was considerable fog in the area.
Mr Kaczynski was flying to Russia for events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police in Katyn and elsewhere during World War II.
The Polish army chief of staff, General Franciszek Gagor, National Bank president Slawomir Skrzypek and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer were also on the passenger list.
In Warsaw, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an extraordinary meeting of his cabinet.
Mr Kaczynski, 60, became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year's presidential vote.
The nationalist conservative was the twin brother of Poland's opposition leader, former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Mr Kaczynski had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this year. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against parliamentary speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk's governing Civic Platform party.
According to the constitution, Mr Komorowski would take over presidential duties.
Mr Kaczynski's wife, Maria, was an economist. They had a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters. Russian officials said there were 96 people on board the doomed aircraft.
''According to confirmed information, there were 96 people aboard the Tu-154 that crashed near Smolensk, including 88 members of the Polish delegation,'' a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry told Interfax news agency.