Clips emanating from the site of the crash of a military helicopter that claimed the lives of Ghana’s Defence Minister, Edward Omane Boamah and Environment Minister Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed have shown rescue workers retrieving bodies of the deceased in cocoa sacks.
The two ministers and six other people perished in the southern Ashanti region of the country on Wednesday, August 6 when the military helicopter they were travelling in went down and exploded.
The helicopter had taken off in the morning from the capital, Accra, and was going towards the gold-mining area of Obuasi in the Ashanti region for a ceremony when it lost touch with the control tower.
The search and rescue team later found the wreckage in the Adansi area of Ashanti.
Apart from the two ministers who were billed to play a role at a ceremony at Obuasi, other victims were the deputy national security coordinator and former minister of agriculture, Alhaji Mohammad Muniru Limuna and the vice chairman of Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, Samuel Sarpong.
Clips from the site of the crash show men carrying sacks on their heads from inside the bush where the helicopter crashed.
The sacks are believed to contain the charred remains of the two Ghanaian ministers and the other victims of the crash.
Many Ghanaians have criticised the handling of the recovery process, wondering why body bags could not be used to carry the remains of the victims.
An X user, €lorm wrote: “Sacks?? Really ?? Sacks?? How on earth did they send ambulances to an accident site without taking along body bags??”
@yg_quesi wrote that life was cruel if a “whole ministers’ bodies” could be packed in cocoa sacks.
It is not clear what caused the crash. However, the Ghana military said the incident was already being investigated.
