Grieving Poles pay tribute to victims of air crash

The two minutes of silence were preceded by the thundering pealing of church bells and din of emergency sirens for nearly a minute before everything faded away.

In front of the presidential palace hundreds of people stopped what they were doing and stood, some with their eyes closed and heads bowed.

Earlier, at the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, hundreds gathered for a morning Mass and left flowers and written condolences. Among the dead were Poland's army chief of staff, the navy chief commander and heads of the air and land forces, who were all making the emotional trip to honour Polish officers killed by the Soviet secret police in 1940 in and near the forest of Katyn in western Russia.

In Moscow, Russia's transport ministry said that Russian and Polish investigators had begun to decipher flight data recorders of the ageing Soviet-built Tu-154 airliner that crashed on Saturday while trying to land in deep fog in Smolensk, killing all on board.

Russian officials had initially said 97 people were killed but revised the figure to 96. Poland's foreign ministry also confirmed the figure.

Polish government spokesman Pawel Gras said that despite the loss of so many leaders, the country's armed forces were operating normally, and all state offices were doing the same.

That the crash occurred near Katyn served as a stark reminder to Poland of the horrors of that place. Mr Kaczynski and those aboard the flight were heading there to remember the thousands of Poles systematically executed in 1940.

About 4,000 Polish army officers were killed in Katyn itself by Josef Stalin's NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB. In total some 22,000 officers and others were killed there and in other areas.

Polish-Russian relations had been improving recently after being poisoned for decades over the massacre.

Russia has never formally apologised for the murders but Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation.

Mr Kaczynski, 60, was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled Second World War-era leader General Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

The bodies of Mr Kaczynski and his wife were expected in Warsaw by early yesterday afternoon, the foreign ministry said. Mr Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw flew to Smolensk to identify the bodies.

People also continued to stream to the stately presidential palace in Warsaw's historic centre, where large sections of the street were blocked to traffic to allow the flow of people expressing their grief. Mourners carried candles and roses and joined a long line to sign a book of condolences in the palace.

Lech Walesa, the anti-communist dissident who went on to become Polish president, was among those who signed.

Children also placed simple drawings and messages alongside a picture of a human figure and a cross.

Polish TV carried black-and-white montages of those killed and devoted non-stop coverage to the crash

Besides Mr Kaczynski, aboard the plane were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy parliament speaker, the Olympic committee head, the civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers.