Chilima died at the age of 51 after a military aircraft he was flying in crashed in a forest in the northern side of Malawi.
It’s reported that the flight was on a short flight from Lilongwe (the capital of Malawi), to the northern city of Mzuzu for a funeral of a former government minister when it went missing in the morning of Monday. According to the the president’s statement on the death of his vice, air traffic controllers had told the plane not to land in Mzuzu due to bad weather and poor visibility and advised to return to Lilongwe where it set-off from. Then later, air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane and lost it’s signals from radar.
Death not only claimed the life of Chilima, but also for the former first lady, Patricia Shanil Dzimbiri and other 7 individuals whose identity is yet to be unmasked. Their bodies plus the crashed aircraft were discovered in a mountainous area in the country’s north.
On Tuesday, the Malawian president declared a 21-days national mourning for the late Chilima.
The national flag and all other institutional flags shall fly at half-mast till the end of the mourning set period.
