Coffin of Polish president killed in plane crash contains remains of other victims

The coffin of Lech Kaczyński and his wife in Krakow, Poland, in 2016. Photograph: Jarek Praszkiewicz/AP

Polish authorities have found the remains of two other people in the coffin of former president Lech Kaczyński while investigating the plane crash in Russia that killed him and 95 others in 2010.

The caskets of 11 further victims also contained body parts of others, prosecutors said after examining 24 coffins from the crash, which some officials of the ruling rightwing party have blamed on an explosion aboard, without providing evidence.

The April 2010 crash near the western Russian city of Smolensk – the worst such disaster for Poland since the second world war – has left Polish society deeply divided over the cause despite the previous, centrist government’s conclusion from its own investigation that a pilot error was to blame.