Malawi VP Saulos Chilima’s funeral convoy rams into mourners, kills pregnant woman, three others

Four people, including a pregnant woman, were killed on Sunday in Ntcheu district in southern Malawi after a vehicle rammed into mourners taking part in former Malawian Vice President Saulos Chilima’s funeral procession, local media reported.

The accident occurred when a vehicle in a motorcade transporting the body of Chilima rammed into mourners, killing four people and injuring 12 others, according to the report.

The injured have been admitted to hospital for treatment, the report said.

Chilima’s body arrived at his home village of Nsipe in Ntcheu on Sunday afternoon before being buried on Monday.

Chilima died on Monday with eight others when a military aircraft on an internal flight crashed into Malawi’s Chikangawa Forest in dense fog.

The wreckage of the plane was found on Tuesday.

His party, the United Transformation Movement (UTM), allied with President Lazarus Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party (MCP) in the 2020 presidential election, fielding a joint ticket.

During a public viewing of the body at a stadium in Lilongwe on Sunday afternoon, Chakwera called for an independent enquiry into the accident.

“People want to know how the plane carrying the Vice President and the others went missing and crashed. I too want to know what happened,” he said.

The plane, a Malawi Army Air Wing Dornier 228-202K, disappeared after it failed to land in the northern city of Mzuzu due to bad weather and was told to return to the capital.