An aircraft carrying Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Klaus Chilima and nine others has gone missing, Malawi’s presidency said on Monday.

“All efforts by aviation authorities to make contact with the Aircraft since it went off the radar have failed thus far,” Malawi’s Office of the President and Cabinet said in a statement.

Chilima, 51, was aboard a Malawi Defense Force aircraft that left the capital Lilongwe at 09:17am, it said, adding that search and rescue operations were ongoing.

The aircraft had been scheduled to land at Mzuzu International Airport at 10:02am, according to the statement.

President Lazarus Chakwera has ordered regional and national forces to conduct an “immediate search and rescue operation to locate the whereabouts of the aircraft”, the statement said.

Chakwera, who was due to travel to the Bahamas for a working visit, has since cancelled his trip.

In 2022, Chilima was stripped of his powers when he was arrested and charged with graft over a bribery scandal involving a British-Malawian businessman.

Last month, a Malawian court dropped the charges after Chilima attended several court appearances.

Last month, a helicopter carrying Iran’s then-president Ebrahim Raisi and other officials disappeared for several hours before it was confirmed that it was involved in a “crash upon landing” in the mountainous Varzaqan region of the country under poor weather conditions.

Foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, governor of East Azerbaijan province Malek Rahmati and others were also onboard the convoy, which comprised three helicopters, of which the other two landed safely.