Plane carrying Malawi’s vice president disappears

A military plane carrying Malawi’s vice president and nine others has gone missing,

The president’s office disclosed this Monday, saying a search for the missing plane is underway.

Aljazeera reports that the plane carrying 51-year-old Vice President Saulos Chilima 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.

A statement  by President Lazarus Chakwera’s office said that the aircraft took off just after 9am local time (07:00 GMT).

According to the statement, aviation authorities lost contact with the plane when it “went off radar”

Chakwera was informed of the missing plane by the head of the Malawian armed forces.

The president then ordered a search operation and cancelled a trip to the Bahamas.

The statement said, “All efforts to make contact with the aircraft since it went off radar have failed thus far.”

It added that the president had ordered national and local authorities to “conduct an immediate search and rescue operation to locate the whereabouts of the aircraft.”