President Zuzana Čaputová and Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad on Tuesday paid tribute to the 42 people killed in the crash of a Slovak military transport aircraft 15 years ago in Hungarian mountains close to the Slovak border. Victims of the plane crash are honoured annually on Borso Hill in Hungary on the anniversary of the tragedy. "Due to the pandemic, only Chief of the General Staff Daniel Zmeko and a handful of generals have travelled to the Hungarian village of Hejce this year. I and President Zuzana Čaputová, the commander in chief of the Slovak Armed Forces, paid our respects to the victims at the Defence Ministry's Reconciliation Memorial," wrote Nad on a social network.
The An-24 plane, which was carrying Slovak soldiers home from the KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, crashed in mountainous terrain in Hungary only 50 kilometres from its planned destination of Kosice at around 7.30 p.m. on January 19, 2006. Only one of the 43 people on board survived.
