On Saturday, a monument which commemorates victims of the Slovak Air Force plane crash -- the biggest accident in Slovak military history, will be unveiled in the Hungarian village of Hejce near the local church. The accident happened on January 19, 2006 and claimed 42 lives of Slovak peacekeepers and instructors returning home the KFOR mission in Kosovo. The AN-24 plane crash had only one survivor.
Relatives of the victims together with Slovak and Hungarian official representatives will first lay flowers at the memorial plague on top of the hill Borso, where the tragedy happened.
The new monument symbolizes heroism of those who lost their lives in the crash. The author of the piece is Slovak sculptor Ladislav Sabo. The memorial cost SKK 4.5 million, and was made of granite from the Tatra Mountains. It is placed in between four 6- meter tall trees embedded in bronze broken by the plane when it crashed. One-third of the money for the monument comes from a public collection. The administration of the village of Hejce is considering opening a memorial room in a nearby church building.
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