Fourteen people have died and 10 others are nursing various degrees of injuries after a vehicle they were travelling in on Saturday overturned on the M1 section between Blantyre and Chikwawa.

Police said the accident happened on Saturday night and involved a Mazda Bongo pick-up registration NE 5431 which hit another vehicle going in the Chikwawa direction before swerving sideways and overturning near Kamuzu View on the Blantyre-Chikwawa Road.

In a telephone interview on Sunday, Blantyre Police Station deputy spokesperson Aubrey Singanyama said police were, as of on Sunday, yet to identify the owner of the vehicle as the driver allegedly fled the scene of the accident.

He also said the identities of the deceased were yet to be established.

Singanyama said: “We are yet to identify the identities of the victims and get more particulars because the driver of the vehicle fled the scene of the accident on Saturday].

“We are yet to get further details of where they were coming from and if it was a hired vehicle. So, as of now, I must say that our investigations are still ongoing.”

He said 11 people were pronounced dead upon arrival at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre.

Communities from around the scene mobilised themselves to help the casualties while some asked other motorists to help ferry them to the nearby Madziabango Health Centre for medical attention.

One of the motorists that helped in ferrying the casualties, Vincent Theu said in an interview on Saturday evening that the community members helped in putting the overturned vehicle back on its wheels.

He said: “They struggled to get the vehicle to its normal position because that was the only option that was there at the particular moment. They could not have waited for an alternative that could have perhaps helped in pulling the vehicle out when people were trapped.”

Theu said many motorists stopped to help and that due to the impact of the accident, the motorists that stopped by agreed to ferry the casualties to QECH.

 The accident comes barely a week after similar accidents in Karonga District where one person was killed and at Nkhamenya in Kasungu where 10 people were killed and 13 others sustained injuries on the same M1.

According to statistics from National Police, during the first half of this year, from January to June, road accidents have claimed 565 lives. The country has recorded 2 728 accidents during the same period.

In August this year, our sister paper Nation on Sunday reported that the country’s main referral hospitals, including QECH and Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH), registered an increase in road traffic accident cases.

Amid such an increase in the number of road accidents, including deaths, National Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya told The Nation edition of September 21 2022 that police have since scaled up road safety campaigns.

In 2021, from January to December, the country recorded 9 416 road accidents. Of those accidents, 1 226 were fatal and claimed 1 444 lives.

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