WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo suffered minor injuries Friday after a small Fiat hit her car, officials and Polish news reports said. Her spokesman said she was being examined in a hospital but wasn’t badly hurt.
The accident occurred in the southern town of Oswiecim, which is Szydlo’s hometown. Szydlo was traveling in the second car in an official 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. He said Szydlo, the driver and a security officer were taken to a nearby hospital.
Government spokesman Rafal Bochenek told the news agency PAP that Szydlo’s injuries were not serious but that she was undergoing a precautionary examination in a hospital.
“Fortunately, nothing bad happened,” he said.
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.
It was the second such accident involving a convoy that Szydlo was traveling in.
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, Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz escaped uninjured from an eight-car collision in January.