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The missing plane carrying Malawi’s vice-president, Saulos Chilima, has been found wrecked with no survivors, President Lazarus Chakwera has said on Tuesday, June 11.
Chilima and nine others were flying within the country on Monday, June 10 when their aircraft disappeared from airport radars.
“The plane has been found and I am deeply saddened and sorry to inform you all, it has turned out to be a terrible tragedy,” President Chakwera said, as quoted by Channels TV.
The tragic incident becomes the second involving a world leader this year weeks after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.
Malawian search teams discovered the wreckage of the plane carrying Chilima on Tuesday, a day after it went missing in bad weather.
The military aircraft, with Chilima, 51, and nine others on board, vanished on Monday after being unable to land in Mzuzu due to poor visibility and was redirected to the capital, Lilongwe.
Photographs obtained by AFP from a member of the military rescue team showed soldiers on a misty hillside near debris marked with the registration number of the Malawi Army Air Wing Dornier 228-202K plane.
Rescuers had been searching a foggy forest south of Mzuzu on Tuesday, after identifying the last communication tower the plane contacted before disappearing.
Army Commander General Paul Valentino Phiri mentioned that neighboring countries had been assisting with the search, providing helicopters and drones.
The group left Lilongwe just after 9:00 am (0700 GMT) on Monday to attend a funeral for a former cabinet minister in Mzuzu, about 370 kilometers (230 miles) away.
Malawi’s former first lady Shanil Dzimbiri was also a passenger.
Chilima, first elected vice president in 2014, is a popular figure in Malawi, especially among young people.
However, in 2022, during his second term, he was stripped of his powers after being arrested on corruption charges linked to a British-Malawian businessman. Last month, a Malawian court dropped the charges, and he resumed his official duties.