MOSCOW: Col Yuri Gagarin, the first man to fly in space, was killed in an air crash during a training flight yesterday [March 27], it was announced today.

The 34-year-old cosmonaut made his historic flight on board the space craft “Vostok (east)” on July 12, 1961, orbiting the earth in a trip lasting one hour and 48 minutes.

The announcement said: “The Central Com­mit­tee of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of USSR and the Council of Ministers of USSR are deeply grieved to announce the death of Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, in an air crash.” A Government funeral Commission has been set up.

Gagarin will be buried at the Kremlin wall in the Red Square.

Party leader Leonid Brezhnev, President Nikolai Podgorny, Premier Alexei Kosygin and other leaders observed a minute of silence in Gagarin’s memory at a meeting of the Moscow city Communist Party Committee this morning.

Radio Moscow said Gagarin died while test- flying a new aircraft with an engineer-colonel named Vladimir Sergeyevich Seyogin. — Agency

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2018