Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima has been confirmed dead following yesterday’s plane crash that went missing on the radar during morning hours.
The news has been confirmed by President Lazarus Chakwera who stated in a televised address that none of the ten people on board – including the 51-year-old Chilima – had survived after the aircraft crashed into a forest.
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This was after the rescue teams in Malawi found the wreckage of a plane that was carrying Mr. Chilima but reported that there were no survivors.
The remains of the military plane were located on Tuesday in a mountainous area in the north of the country, a day after it went missing in bad weather.
The plane carrying left the capital, Lilongwe, on Monday but failed to make its scheduled landing at Mzuzu International Airport about 370km (230 miles) to the north around 45 minutes later.
The president had then ordered national and local authorities to “conduct an immediate search and rescue operation to locate the whereabouts of the aircraft”, his office said.
Cases of senior politicians and government leaders perishing in military plane crashes have recently been on the rise, with recent victims being Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Kenya’s Chief of Defense Forces, the late Francis Ogolla.