A mass grave of 25 people suspected to be of migrants from Ethiopia has been discovered in Malawi, police said on Wednesday.
The mass grave was found by villagers in the Mzimba area, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of the capital Lilongwe, when they were collecting wild honey from the forest, following which they alerted the police officers.
“The grave was discovered late on Tuesday but we cordoned it off and started exhuming today (Wednesday). So far, we have discovered 25 bodies,” police spokesman Peter Kalaya told AFP.
The spokesman hinted that the grave might have been of illegal migrants who were being transported to South Africa via Malawi.
After gathering evidence from the site, the police concluded that the victims were Ethiopian males aged between 25 and 40 years.
After exhuming, their decomposed bodies were taken to a morgue for autopsy.
“The bodies appear to have been buried probably not more than a month ago,” he was quoted as saying.
Malawi, a landlocked country in southeastern Africa, is often used to smuggle people from east Africa to the continent’s most industrialized country South Africa.
South Africa is a magnet for poor migrants from elsewhere on the continent.
According to police spokesman Kalaya, authorities have intercepted 221 migrants between January and September this year, of which 186 were Ethiopians.
Ethiopia is currently in the midst of a civil war for the control of Tigray region, where the government’s forces have been squaring off with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) for the past two years.
The TPLF dominated a coalition government in Ethiopia until current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018.
(With inputs from agencies)
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