Hamile dynamite blast: Curfew reported as Interior Minister visits injured officer

A curfew has been reported in Hamile after a fatal dynamite explosion, while Ghana’s Interior Minister, Muntaka Mubarak, visited an injured immigration officer in hospital, according to separate media reports on Wednesday.

Anansi News reported that the government had imposed an 11-hour daily curfew in the border town. The report did not specify the curfew’s start and end times.

TV3 Ghana reported that Mr Mubarak visited the 37 Military Hospital to check on the injured officer and offer support. The explosion occurred on Tuesday, 3 November, in Hamile, in the Upper West Region, near Ghana’s border with Burkina Faso.

Casualty accounts differ

The precise death toll remains unclear. The Ghanaian Times reported that the Ghana Immigration Service confirmed one officer had died after an explosion during a border patrol operation. In its account of the Service’s statement, the newspaper said a tricycle rider was also killed and two officers were injured, with one later dying and the other receiving emergency treatment.

The same newspaper cited a local journalist who reported that two civilians and one immigration officer died. Other reports have given different totals: Metro TV Ghana reported two immigration officers and two civilians killed, while the Ghanaian Times’ own headline described an officer and two others as dead. These accounts have not established a single, independently confirmed total.

The hospital information has also changed across reports. The Ghanaian Times said the surviving officer was receiving treatment at Nandom Hospital and was stable; TV3 later reported the minister’s visit to the 37 Military Hospital. The supplied reports do not explain whether the officer was transferred.

The Ghanaian Times also cited a local journalist who said young people gathered after the blast and that four people were shot while security forces tried to disperse them. That account was not included in the newspaper’s summary of the Immigration Service statement.

The Service’s account, as reported by the Ghanaian Times, said officers on border patrol approached a man transporting a load on a tricycle, which exploded as they tried to stop him. ModernGhana also reported that the blast involved a tricycle carrying suspected dynamite and that security personnel had attempted to intercept it. The full circumstances of the explosion and the reported curfew arrangements remain unclear.