Polish experts have retrieved bones, probably human, from the site of an air crash in Russia where Poland's president and dozens of other dignitaries perished in April, prosecutors said today.
The find could fuel concerns among families of the victims that they may not have been given the correct remains of their loved ones for burial by the Russian authorities following the disaster at Smolensk airport, in which 96 people died.
Poland's first lady, prominent MPs, top generals and a raft of other senior state figures were among those killed.
Some victims' families are considering exhumation, saying they are not sure the coffins they received really contained the bodies of their relatives, and a group of archaeologists has been examining the site recently for human remains.
"The archaeologists have found elements of bones on the crash site, which are most probably human bones," said Zbigniew Rzepa, spokesman for the Polish military prosecutors office.
"The elements will be now analysed and, if it is confirmed they are human bones, they will be moved to a laboratory in Moscow to identify them precisely," he said.
Rafal Rogalski, a representative of several of the families, said the widow of Przemyslaw Gosiewski, a conservative lawmaker of the main opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, would file a motion with the military prosecutor's office this week to exhume her husband's body.
Other families, mostly of non-PiS crash victims, have appealed not to politicise the tragedy.
The crash happened as Poland's centre-right government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk was seeking to improve ties with Russia that have long been strained over security issues and their turbulent history.
Warsaw has expressed concern over problems securing the plane wreck and access to documents needed for a separate Polish investigation into the April 10th disaster.
Analysts do not expect these problems to derail the rapprochement between Poland and Russia, whose President Dmitry Medvedev is due to visit Warsaw on December 6th to in another sign of improving relations.
On Thursday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will also visit Warsaw and co-host a meeting of a Polish-Russian strategic cooperation committee with his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski.
Reuters