WARSAW, Poland -- Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo suffered injuries in a car crash in southern Poland on Friday and was flown by helicopter to Warsaw for medical tests, even though doctors and her spokesman said that she was not badly hurt.
The accident occurred shortly before 7 p.m. in the southern town of Oswiecim, which is Szydlo's hometown. Szydlo, 53, was travelling in a convoy along the town's main road when another car drove into Szydlo's black Audi limousine, causing it to hit a tree.
The state broadcaster TVP published an image of her limousine, with the front of the car bashed in.
Sebastian Glen, a police spokesman, said the car that hit the prime minister's car was a small Fiat driven by a 21-year-old man who was sober. Two security officers, one of whom was the car's driver, were also taken to a hospital with injuries.
Government spokesman Rafal Bochenek said Szydlo was in "good condition" but was being transported 350 kilometres by helicopter to a government hospital in Warsaw for further monitoring and tests.
Dr. Andrzej Jakubowski, who examined Szydlo in a hospital in Oswiecim, said she was stable and conscious all the time and was talking and "very strong" given the trauma. Jakubowski said it was Szydlo's decision to go through more tests in Warsaw.
Two other persons from the accident were being diagnosed and undergoing treatment at the hospital's orthopedics ward, the doctor said.
In Warsaw, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the governing party, Law and Justice, said during a speech to supporters that "I must start from the sad news that there has been a car accident in which the prime minister and Government Protection Bureau officers were seriously hurt."
Oswiecim is best known to the world by its German name, Auschwitz. It is the town where Nazi Germany ran the death camp in occupied Poland during World War II and today is the site of a memorial and museum that draws large numbers of visitors.
Poland's interior minister called an emergency meeting with the leadership of the Government Protection Office, which protects and drives Szydlo and other top figures.
It was the second such accident in four months involving a convoy that Szydlo was travelling in and the third involving a top government member.
In November, several vehicles in a Polish government convoy collided during a state visit to Israel. Szydlo was not in one of those that collided but two other Polish officials had minor injuries.
Separately, Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz escaped uninjured from an eight-car collision in January.
