Malawi: Baby dead and 23 people missing after hippo capsizes canoe

A one-year-old child has died and a further 23 people are feared dead after a hippopotamus charged into a canoe, causing it to capsize in a river in southern Malawi.

Police are still searching for the missing victims but after scouring the area for 24 hours, hopes are fading.

The long wooden canoe was carrying 37 people across the crocodile and hippo infested Shire River when it was hit by the animal on Monday, authorities said.

Malawian police rescued 13 of the stranded people with the help of World Food Program personnel working in the area and provided boats for the rescue operation, Nsanje District Police Commissioner Dominic Mwandira said.

Police fear the missing people are dead, spokesperson Agnes Zalakoma said.

“It is too dangerous because it (the river) is too shallow and in this river there are crocodiles that most of the time attack people and also hippopotamus that cause incidents like the one we’re dealing with,” Zalakoma told CNN.

Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera sent Minister of Water and Sanitation Abida Mia to the scene.

She said locals told her hippos often caused problems in the area and they wanted the animals to be relocated.

Hippos are one of the most aggressive animals on Earth, according to National Geographic, and are more dangerous than other predators like crocodiles and lions.

They can snap a canoe in half with their powerful jaws, and they kill about 500 people in Africa each year, the wildlife magazine says.

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