Malawi’s VP among 10 killed in plane crash, president says

Malawi’s vice president, Saulos Chilima, was among 10 people killed when a small military plane crashed in a mountainous region in the north of the country, the president said

Malawi’s vice president, Saulos Chilima, was among 10 people killed when a small military plane crashed in a mountainous region in the north of the country, the president said Tuesday. Chilima was 51.

President Lazarus Chakwera announced in a live address on state television that the wreckage of the plane had been located after a search of more than a day in thick forests and hilly terrain near the northern city of Mzuzu. Chakwera said there were no survivors of the crash.

Former first lady Shanil Dzimbiri, the ex-wife of former President Bakili Muluzi, was also on the plane, the president had said. There were seven passengers and three military crew members onboard.

The group was traveling to Mzuzu to attend the funeral of a former government minister. Chilima had just returned from an official visit to South Korea on Sunday.

Hundreds of soldiers, police officers and forest rangers had been searching for the plane after it went missing Monday morning while making the 45-minute flight from the southern African nation’s capital, Lilongwe, to Mzuzu, around 370 kilometers (230 miles) to the north.

Air traffic controllers told the plane not to attempt a landing at Mzuzu’s airport because of bad weather and poor visibility and asked it to turn back to Lilongwe, Chakwera said in an address late Monday night. Air traffic control then lost contact with the aircraft and it disappeared from radar, he said.

The president described the aircraft as a small, propeller driven plane operated by the Malawian armed forces. The tail number he provided shows it is a Dornier 228-type twin propeller plane that was delivered to the Malawian army in 1988, according to the ch-aviation website that tracks aircraft information.

Around 600 personnel were involved in the search in a vast forest plantation in the Viphya Mountains near Mzuzu, authorities said, including around 300 police officers, 200 soldiers and local forest rangers.