Malawi police find more bodies near mass grave that contained 25 Ethiopians

Four more bodies of suspected illegal immigrants from Ethiopia were found near the site of a mass grave in northern Malawi that contained the remains of 25 Ethiopian nationals, according to police in the South African country.

Malawi police spokesman Peter Kalaya said Ethiopians are suspected of being victims of human trafficking. The four bodies were discovered a day after the bodies of 25 Ethiopian migrants were exhumed from a mass grave in Mzimba district in northern Malawi. The 25 victims were men aged between 25 and 40, according to police.

In a Thursday update, Kalaya said: “The (newly discovered) bodies have been found.”

He added that an autopsy was being performed on the victims to determine the cause of death.

Kalaya told CNN on Friday that some arrests were made.

“Seventy-two Ethiopians were arrested for ‘illegal entry’ that violates Malawi’s immigration laws (and) ten Malawians were arrested because we suspected they were helping these illegal immigrants through Malawi,” the police spokesperson said.

Malawi has increasingly become a popular route for unions smuggling undocumented migrants, mainly from the Horn of Africathrough the southern African country, with the aim of reaching South Africa, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“We intercept illegal immigrants from time to time in the country,” Kalaya told CNN on the Malawi government’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, stating that many of those intercepted are Ethiopians and Somalis.

More than 200 illegal immigrants have been intercepted in the past eight months, he said, adding that 186 of them were Ethiopian nationals.

Last year, more than 100 Ethiopians were returned to their country “after being found stranded at Malawi’s borders”, said the immigration service of the country at the time.

In 2012, nearly 50 migrants from Ethiopia lost their lives when their boat capsized while crossing Lake Malawi.