SIRENS will start an official national day of mourning at noon today following the tragic military aircraft accident on Thursday, January 19 in which all but one of the soldiers and crew on board died.
All state institutions will lower national flags to half-mast. Masses for the dead will be held while state subsidized media, such as Slovak Television and Slovak Radio cancelled all entertainment programmes for the day. The official mourning will last until tomorrow noon.
Forty-two of the 43 people on board the military Antonov-24 plane died after the plane hit the top of the Borsó hill near the Hungarian village of Telkibánya, close to the Hungarian-Slovak border. The one survivor, Martin Farkaš, is being treated in Košice hospital.
The official farewell to the victims with full military honours should take place this Thursday at the military airport in Košice, the daily SME reported.
The investigation into the tragedy is underway but is bound to take weeks, if not months.
Compiled by Martina Jurinová from press reports
TheSlovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the informationpresented in its Flash News postings.
