BLANTYRE, Malawi: The Malawi government said Wednesday that Vice President Saulos Chilima will be honored with a state funeral after he died in a plane crash along with eight other people.
President Lazarus Chakwera had already announced 21 days of national mourning on Tuesday, when the wreckage of the small military plane carrying Chilima and a former first lady was discovered in a mountainous area in the country’s north. Flags will fly at half-staff across the southern African nation during the period of mourning.
Chakwera has appointed a ministerial committee to oversee preparations for Chilima’s state funeral, the government said in a statement. No date was announced.
Chakwera previously said that there were 10 people on the plane but the government now says that a total of nine were on board when it crashed.
Everyone was killed on impact when the twin propellor aircraft went down in a hilly, forested area in bad weather, the president said. The victims included former first lady Shanil Dzimbiri, the ex-wife of former Malawian President Bakili Muluzi. Six passengers and three military crew members were killed.
The plane was carrying Chilima and members of his staff on a short flight from the capital, Lilongwe, to the northern city of Mzuzu to attend a funeral of a former government minister when it went missing Monday morning. The president said that air traffic controllers had told the plane not to land in Mzuzu because of bad weather and poor visibility and to return to Lilongwe. Air traffic controllers then lost contact with the plane and it disappeared from radar.
Hundreds of soldiers, police officers and forest rangers searched for more than 24 hours before the wreckage was discovered in a forest plantation south of Mzuzu.
The remains of the victims were brought back to Lilongwe on a Zambian Air Force helicopter on Tuesday night, when officials and mourners including Chakwera and Chilima’s wife, Mary, gathered at an airport. The bodies of Chilima and the others were transported from the airport in ambulances as soldiers lined the tarmac and saluted.
Malawi announces state funeral and 21 days of mourning for vice president killed in a plane crash
https://arab.news/2papy
Malawi announces state funeral and 21 days of mourning for vice president killed in a plane crash
- Everyone was killed on impact when the twin propellor aircraft went down in a hilly, forested area in bad weather
- The plane was carrying Vice President Saulos Chilima and members of his staff on a short flight
Venezuela says oil exports continue normally despite Trump blockade
- Trump warned “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America”
- Oil prices surged in early trading Wednesday in London on news of the blockade, which comes a week after US troops seized a sanctioned oil tanker
CARACAS: Venezuela struck a defiant note Wednesday, insisting that its crude oil exports were not impacted by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a potentially crippling blockade.
Trump’s declaration on Tuesday marked a new escalation in his months-long campaign of military and economic pressure on Venezuela’s leftist authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, shrugged off the threat of more pain, insisting that it was proceeding with business as usual.
“Export operations for crude and byproducts continue normally. Oil tankers linked to PDVSA operations continue to sail with full security,” state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said.
Trump said Tuesday he was imposing “A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”
Referring to the heavy US military presence in the Caribbean — including the world’s largest aircraft carrier — he warned “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”
Oil prices surged in early trading Wednesday in London on news of the blockade, which comes a week after US troops seized a sanctioned oil tanker that had just left Venezuela with over 1 million barrels of crude.
Maduro held telephone talks with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to discuss what he called the “escalation of threats” from Washington and their “implications for regional peace.”
Guterres’s spokesman said the UN chief was working to avoid “further escalation.”
- ‘We are not intimidated’ -
Venezuela’s economy, which has been in freefall over the last decade of increasingly hard-line rule by Maduro, relies heavily on petroleum exports.
Trump’s campaign appears aimed at undermining domestic support for Maduro but the Venezuelan military said Wednesday it was “not intimidated” by the threats.
The foreign minister of China, the main market for Venezuelan oil, defended Caracas in a phone call with his Venezuelan counterpart Yvan Gi against the US “bullying.”
“China opposes all unilateral bullying and supports all countries in defending their sovereignty and national dignity,” he said.
Last week’s seizure of the M/T Skipper, in a dramatic raid involving US forces rappelling from a helicopter, marked a shift in Trump’s offensive against Maduro.
In August, the US leader ordered the biggest military deployment in the Caribbean Sea since the 1989 US invasion of Panama — purportedly to combat drug trafficking, but taking particular aim at Venezuela, a minnow in the global drug trade.
US strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have left at least 95 people dead since.
Caracas believes that the anti-narcotics operations are a cover for a bid to topple Maduro and steal Venezuelan oil.
The escalating tensions have raised fears of a potential US intervention to dislodge Maduro.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum waded into the dispute on Wednesday, declaring that the United Nations was “nowhere to be seen” and asked that it step up to “prevent any bloodshed.”
- Oil lifeline -
The US blockade threatens major pain for Venezuela’s crumbling economy.
Venezuela has been under a US oil embargo since 2019, forcing it to sell its production on the black market at significantly lower prices, primarily to Asian countries.
The country produces one million barrels of oil per day, down from more than three million in the early 2000s.
Capital Economics analysts predicted that the blockade “would cut off a key lifeline for Venezuela’s economy” in the short term.
“The medium-term impact will hinge largely on how tensions with the US evolve — and what the US administration’s goals are in Venezuela.”
