Israel Saria
Gunmen opened fire on the coach carrying Togo’s national football squad to African Cup of Nations in Angola, killing the driver and wounding nine others, including two players.
The bus had just entered the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, where separatists have waged a three-decade long war, when it came under heavy gunfire for several minutes, a Togo team official said.
An Angolan minister called the attack an “act of terrorism”.
Many of the players at the tournament are with clubs at the top level of European football including Cameroon forward Samuel Eto’o of Internazionale, Chelsea‘s Ivory Coast striker Dider Drogba and Manchester City‘s Emmanuel Adebayor, who was African Footballer of the Year last year.
The separatist group the Front for the Liberation of Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) claimed responsibility for the attack, which happened two days before the start of the 2010 African Cup of Nations, Africa’s most-followed sporting event.
“This operation is just the start of a series of planned actions that will continue to take place in the whole territory of Cabinda,” said the statement seen by Reuters and signed by FLEC’s secretary general Rodrigues Mingas.
The organisers, the Confederation of African Football, said the tournament would still go ahead despite the attack.
“Our first priority is the safety of the players but the tournament will go ahead,” CAF spokesman Suleimanu Habubu said in Luanda.
CAF said senior officials would fly to the area on Saturday.
The attack comes five months before South Africa becomes the first African nation to host the football World Cup.
The Angolan government said it would beef up security so the tournament, due to run from January 10-31 in four provinces including Cabinda, could proceed peacefully.
Host nation Angola had hoped the tournament would showcase how well it had recovered from decades of civil war.
“The response from the (police) escort meant the damage was limited and there are now nine injured people in hospital,” Winny Dogbatse, a senior Togo official told Reuters TV.
Togo midfielder Thomas Dossevi told French radio how he and his teammates cowered on board the bus during the attack.
“We had crossed the border about five minutes before and the bus was fired on for a good quarter of an hour. We protected ourselves as best we could,” he told France Info.
Dossevi told L’Equipe he no longer felt like playing in the tournament.
“We have not yet been thinking about possible moves but it is true that nobody wants to play”, he said.
Antonio Bento Bembe, the Angolan minister in charge of affairs in Cabinda, an oil producing region that has in the past been targeted by FLEC, said: “This was an act of terrorism.”
In a statement published on state-owned news agency Angop, the Angolan government said: “The FLEC group that carried out this terrorist action came from the Republic of Congo and that is where it returned to after completing this action.”
Cabinda is a small enclave separated from the rest of Angola by a strip of land belonging to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The roots of the conflict between the government and FLEC are deep but one of the main grievances is that Cabindans see few benefits from the oil produced from their land.
The French foreign ministry condemned the attack and called for the perpetrators to be found and brought to justice.
FIFA offered its “utmost sympathy” to the Togo team after the attack.
Togo were due to play Ghana on Monday, one of six group matches and one quarter-final scheduled to be played there.
Two Togolese who play in the English premiership, Aston Villa midfielder Moustapha Salifou and Adebayor, were unhurt, their teams’ websites said.
Salifou was quoted as saying: “I am okay but extremely shocked and very upset.”
Togo officials confirmed the wounded players were Serge Akakpo, who plays for Romanian first division side Vaslui, and reserve goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale, who is with French fourth division team Pontivy.
The other casualties were training, medical and administrative staff.
Reuters
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