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Africa: Malawi Police Exhume 25 Bodies of Ethiopians in Mass Grave


Blantyre, Malawi — Police in northern Malawi are investigating the deaths of 25 male foreigners, believed to be Ethiopians, found buried in a mass grave in a forest in the Mzimba district.

Police say villagers discovered the month-old mass grave in the forest while hunting wild insects in the Mtangatanga Forest Reserve. The preliminary investigation on the deceased shows all of them are Ethiopian nationals.

“We found two temporary traveling documents that indicated names and nationalities of these people,” said Peter Kalaya, spokesperson for Malawi Police Service. “Again, we found sim cards bearing the country Ethiopia. So having prior knowledge that most of the illegal migrants we intercept are from Ethiopia, give us a basis to conclude that these are Ethiopians.”

Kalaya told VOA on Thursday that medical experts were still conducting autopsies on the bodies to establish the cause of death, and that arrangements are being made about where to rebury the bodies.

“At the moment we are strategizing because there is a procedure that has to be followed,” he said. “These are foreign nationals and we will just follow those procedures that are available because the bodies are in a decomposed state. So we will see what to do after everything is done.”

Police on Thursday found another grave containing four bodies in the forest reserve. The nationalities of the deceased from this grave were not immediately known.

Malawi is a transit route for foreigners, especially Ethiopians, who are trafficked through Malawi en route to South Africa. The foreigners mostly use uncharted routes and sometimes find refuge in the forest.