The Vice President of Malawi, Saulos Chilima, along with nine other individuals who were on board a military aircraft, have been confirmed deceased after the aircraft went missing on Monday morning, President Lazarus Chakwera announced on Tuesday, June 11, Xinhua reports.
Earlier, the BBC reported that a senior military official said that the plane carrying Malawi&039;s vice-president may have crashed in a forest in the north of the country.
Saulos Chilima and nine others were flying within the country on Monday morning when their aircraft disappeared from airport radars. The plane, a military aircraft, was flying in bad weather. Soldiers have been searching Chikangawa Forest in an effort to find the plane.
"I am deeply saddened and sorry to inform you all that it has turned out to be a terrible tragedy. The search and rescue team found the aircraft near a hill in the Chikangawa Forest. They found it completely destroyed, with no survivors, as all passengers on board were killed on impact," Chakwera said in a televised address.
Chilima was "a good man, a devoted father and husband, a patriotic citizen who served his country with distinction," he added.
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The vice president was traveling to the funeral of the country's former Attorney General and Minister of Justice Ralph Kasambara, who was found dead at a lodge in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, on Friday. His body was buried Monday at his home village in Nkhata Bay, a few kilometers from Mzuzu Airport.
The aircraft, a Donier 228 belonging to the Malawi Defense Force, failed to make its scheduled landing at Mzuzu Airport at 10:02 a.m. (0802 GMT) Monday in northern Malawi, according to the country's Secretary to the President and Cabinet Colleen Zamba.
The aircraft returned due to bad weather, heading to Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe before it went off the radar.
A search and rescue operation was launched by security agencies in the afternoon around the Chikangawa Forest where it was believed to have been lost.