May 16. (EUROPE PRESS) –
At least one person has died and more than 20 people are missing after a canoe was struck by a hippo on the Mtayamoyo river as it passes through the Nsanje district, located in the south of the country, they have confirmed. The authorities.
The Nsanje Police spokeswoman, Agnes Zalakoma, has indicated that the fatality is a child, before adding that thirteen people have been rescued and another 23 have been reported missing, as reported by the Times 360 news portal. Malawi.
“Chiromo Police detectives and a rescue team are in the area looking for the drowned,” he added, so it is feared that the number of fatalities from the event may increase in the coming hours.
For her part, Gladys Ganda, parliamentarian for Nsanje, has detailed in a message on her account on the social network Facebook that the canoe has been hit by a hippopotamus, which has caused it to capsize when it was carrying more than 30 people on board.
“People were crossing the river to the Mozambican loop, where they carry out agricultural activities,” he said. “Prayers are necessary for the disappeared to be rescued,” Ganda added after the event, the third of its kind in the last three years.
Ganda herself has explained in statements given to the US radio station Voice of America that “Mtayamoyo means ‘death trap'”. “You cross the river at your own risk, since it is infested with crocodiles and hippos and the canoes that operate in the area are not motorized,” she has detailed.
Likewise, it has stressed that this event could have been avoided with the construction of a bridge over the river. “The Mtayamoyo bridge is something mandatory, it is not a luxury. It is a necessity, we must reduce the number of deaths that take place in this area,” he stressed.
