Mourners from across Poland descended on Warsaw today to pay their respects to President Lech Kaczynski and his wife as they lay in state in the most ornate chamber of the presidential palace.

The couple died Saturday in the crash of a government jet carrying dozens of Polish dignitaries to ceremonies in Russia marking 70 years since Soviet secret police slaughtered thousands of Polish officers during World War II.

"We want to say prayers and pay our last respects in person," Tomasz Pytko, 19, told AFP as he and two high-school friends stood in a queue of hundreds outside the palace.

The teenagers hitch-hiked hundreds of kilometres (miles) to Warsaw from the south-central city of Rzeszow.

"We'll wait as long as it takes," he said.

Large swathes of paving stones surrounding the palace were caked in wax from tens of thousands of candles left by mourners.

Spring flowers, mostly red-and-white tulips and carnations and yellow daffodils, lay strewn on the street and in piles around the stately 17th century Palac Namiestnikowski.

Strains of piano music by Poland's beloved 19th century composer Frederic Chopin, emerging from special musical benches installed to mark the bicentennial of his birth this year, could be heard over the din of the crowd.

Mourners clapped and threw flowers before the hearse carrying Maria Kaczynska's coffin as it wound through the capital to the palace.

Senior leaders from across the globe are expected to arrive in Poland at the weekend for memorial and funeral ceremonies for the crash victims.

The Kaczynskis are to be laid to rest Sunday in Poland's prestigious Wawel castle cathedral, alongside Polish kings in the historic southern city of Krakow.

Having travelled hundreds of kilometres (miles) Tuesday from Kielce in the south with four fellow students, Mateusz Paczek, 20, questioned the causes behind the crash as he waited patiently in line to pay his respects.

"Apparently no one learned anything from the crash which killed so many pilots," Paczek said, referring to the death in January 2008 of 20 elite Polish pilots travelling together in a military transport aircraft.

Russian investigators have ruled out fire or explosion and technical faults as the causes behind Saturday's crash near Smolensk in western Russia and said that the pilots received explicit weather warnings.

Poland's chief prosecutor has said there was no immediate sign that the crew had been under pressure to land.

Polish media have speculated that Kaczynski or Poland's military top brass aboard the flight had ordered the landing despite air traffic control warnings.

The accident has been dubbed Poland's worst peacetime catastrophe.

Poland's central bank governor and all of the NATO state's chiefs-of-staff, 15 members of parliament and living legends including communist-era president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski and Solidarity heroine Anna Walentynowicz were among the 96 people who perished.

Warsaw resident Joanna Kaczmarek, 43, shook her head as she queried the decision to allow scores of Poland's most senior figures to fly together in an aging Russian aircraft.

"Why did they all get into that flying coffin?," she asked.

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