Madagascar’s policing minister survived a helicopter crash by swimming for 12 hours to reach the shoreline.
Serge Gelle was miraculously unhurt after the aircraft plunged into the sea off the island’s northeastern coast on Monday.
He and a fellow policeman reached land in the seaside town of Mahambo separately on Tuesday morning.
Gelle, 57, appeared in a video on social media lying exhausted on a desk chair in his camouflage uniform.
‘My time to die hasn’t come yet,’ the general said, adding he is cold but not injured.
Both survivors were able to eject themselves from their seats in the helicopter, port authority chief Jean-Edmond Randrianantenaina said.
The search for two other passengers who were on board at the time is ongoing.
It is not known what caused the aircraft, which was flying the minister to inspect the site of a shipwreck, to crash.
He said he was cold but not injured
Gelle had been due to visit the site of the disaster off the northeastern coast, which has now claimed the lives of 39 people after rescue workers retrieved another 18 bodies.
Police chief Zafisambatra Ravoavy paid tribute to the ‘stamina’ of the country’s secretary of state for police, telling the press he’d used one of the helicopter’s seats as a flotation device.
‘He has always had great stamina in sport, and he’s kept up this rhythm as minister, just like a thirty-year-old,’ he said. ‘He has nerves of steel.’
Gelle became minister as part of a cabinet reshuffle in August after serving in the police for three decades.