Crocodile kills Mangochi woman

Game rangers in Mangochi on Tuesday found only the head and arm of a woman who had gone missing on Monday after a crocodile attack.

Group village head (GVH) Chiwalo, of Traditional Authority (T/A) Nankumba from whose area the woman came, said she went missing at around 5pm on Monday after she was attacked by a crocodile.

He said the woman had been bathing  with a friend at Nkope beach on the shores of Lake Malawi. The friend escaped unharmed.

GVH Chiwalo identified the deceased as Avis Bulahimu.

He said yesterday the remains of Bulahimu, who he said was in her 30s, were discovered by game rangers deployed from the Department of Environmental Affairs after an all-night search.

“We reported [her missing] immediately and the game rangers searched for the whole night until around 7am today [yesterday] when they found the head and left arm which we buried right away,” he said.

Chiwalo said crocodiles have been terrorising the area for the past two months now.

Sangwani Phiri, spokesperson for the Department of  Environmental Affairs in the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining, also confirmed that the game rangers recovered the body after an overnight search.

“That is a crocodile infested area that was why we decided to deploy game rangers to search for the woman and kill the beasts after we received the news of her missing,” he said.

The growing crocodile population in Lake Malawi and some rivers has been causing havoc among people living on the lakeshore and river banks for some years. n