On August 6, 2025, the Ghana government, through the Chief of Staff, confirmed the death of eight persons, including two cabinet ministers, in a helicopter crash that happened in the Ashanti Region.
The deceased persons included Defence and Environment ministers, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, and Dr. Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed. Muniru Mohammed, the Acting Deputy National Security Coordinator, Samuel Aboagye, a former Member of Parliament and Samuel Sarpong, a Vice Chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The three crew members lost in the crash were: Squadron Leader Peter Bafemi Anala, Flying Officer Mane-Twum Ampadu and Sergeant Ernest Addo Mensah.
Following the news of the helicopter crash in Adansi Akrofuom District, multiple media outlets and social media users shared images supposedly taken at the scene of the incident.
GhanaFact monitored that several media outlets, including Citi FM (Channel One TV), GhOne TV, Starr FM, and Sika Official (here, here, here, and here) shared images from the crash site, in some cases displaying their logos on the photos.
The images quickly went viral due to the nature of the incident. In one of the posts made by CitiFm on X, the post had gained 139.5K views, with 244 shares, 962 likes, 49 comments, and 58 bookmarks at the time GhanaFact archived it.
RelatedNews
India chopper crash image circulated by media houses on social media
Using Google Reverse Image Search, GhanaFact found that one of the images shared by all three Ghanaian media outlets and a social media blogger, which was portrayed as captured from the crash site, was unrelated.
The image under investigation was the fourth image in the post, which was subsequently used for their news flyer for social media.
Fact-check
We traced the image to a helicopter crash that killed seven people in India’s northern Uttarakhand State on June 15, 2025.
The incident was widely reported by several media outlets, including Sky News, Reuters, and Al Jazeera (here, here, here, here, and here).
A Reuters stock photo from the Indian helicopter crash shows the exact image in the fourth slide of the Citi FM, GhOne, and Sika Official posts and on the third slide of the Starr FM post.
Verdict
The image is misleading and unrelated to the August 6, 2025, Ghana crash.
2024 helicopter mishap video and image recirculated
In another incident, GhanaFact identified an X account named Independent Africa (archived here) that shared a video of a crashed helicopter, claiming to be footage from the recent crash, while attributing it to the CDR Africa page, whose logo was labelled on the video.
The video captioned “A military helicopter reportedly crashed in Adabah, Ashanti Region,” has garnered 11.6k views as of the time the article was published.
Meanwhile, our checks showed that CDR Africa had deleted the video from their X page.
Fact-Check
Using Google reverse image search, GhanaFact traced the video to a Facebook post (archived) by UTV dated March 19, 2024.
The video was shot at the scene of a Ghana Air Force helicopter crash that happened in Bonsukrom, in the Western Region of Ghana.
Therefore, the video being recirculated is unrelated to the August 6 tragic event, but a separate incident that happened last year on March 19, 2024, involving staff of Ghana Gas.
Verdict
Misleading, the video is unrelated to the August 6, 2025, crash.
2024 image is being recirculated as recent and AI hallucination
Another claim found to depict the August 6 event is an image of a helicopter turned upside down, which shows foamy water sprayed on a helicopter in a bushy enclave with a military officer on site.
Several social media users, especially on Facebook (here, here, here, and here), circulated the particular image with the narrative that it was captured at the August 6 crash site. Some international websites (here, here) have since used the same as their featured image on reports about the incident in Ghana.
Fact-check
A reverse image search found that the image was initially posted by the Ghana Fire Service on March 20, 2024, on their social media platforms, along with three other images.
The images were captioned on X read: “W/R: GNFS RESPONDS SWIFTLY TO GHANA AIRFORCE HELICOPTER CRASH AT BONSUKROM.
“The GNFS swiftly acted upon receiving a distress call at 1330 hours to avert any potential fire outbreak following a helicopter crash at Bonsukrom, Agona Nkwanta in the Western Region.”
Verdict
The image was misleading because it was unrelated to the current crash.
GhanaFact also observed that in using the reverse image search, Google AI’s feature presented false information about the image, linking it to the recent mishap on August 6, 2025. This, we classified as a classic case of AI hallucination.
AI hallucination – An analysis
AI hallucinations, according to Google Cloud, “are incorrect or misleading results that AI models generate. These errors can be caused by a variety of factors, including insufficient training data, incorrect assumptions made by the model, or biases in the data used to train the model.
“AI hallucinations can be a problem for AI systems that are used to make important decisions, such as medical diagnoses or financial trading,” the definition added.
In the case of the image of a helicopter with foamy water and a military man in the shot, when uploaded for Google reverse image search verification, Google’s AI search platform gave three false claims associated with the image.
- The image shows a Ghana Air Force helicopter that has reportedly crashed in the Adansi Akrofuom District of the Ashanti Region.
- Preliminary reports suggest some individuals on board sustained injuries.
- There was no official statement from the army or relevant authorities.
All the points gleaned from the image were linked to Modern Ghana news publication, which had recycled the image to portray scenes from the August 6 crash, without any clarification or clearly labelling the originality of the image.
