Dignitaries and citizens have gathered at Black Star Square in Accra on Friday, August 15, 2025, as the nation holds final funeral rites for six of the eight people killed when a Ghana Air Force helicopter crashed on August 6.
Photographers and television crews captured sombre scenes as relatives moved through the crowd to lay flowers and touch the flag draped coffins.
The funerals close a painful chapter that began when a Harbin Z9 military helicopter went down in the Adansi Akrofuom area of the Ashanti region on August 6, killing all eight people on board. Among those confirmed dead were Defence Minister Edward Omane Boamah and Environment Minister Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed. Other passengers included acting deputy national security coordinator Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna, National Democratic Congress vice chairman Samuel Sarpong and former parliamentary candidate Samuel Aboagye. Three crew members also died in the crash.
Two of the victims who were Muslim were given Islamic funeral rites and buried at the military cemetery in Accra on Sunday, August 10, after Janazah prayers at the State House forecourt. Relatives, senior officials and religious leaders attended that ceremony before the bodies were moved to Burma Camp for burial.
Today’s state funeral followed days of mourning across the country. Security arrangements and road closures were in place around central Accra as officials and mourners filed past the coffins for a final farewell.
