Togo soccer team leaves Angola after attack; Cabinda separatist says more attacks possible

Togo soccer team leaves Angola

CABINDA, Angola — Togo withdrew from a continentwide soccer tournament and its players reluctantly left Angola on Sunday, two days after a deadly ambush on the team bus killed three and injured eight. A separatist leader warned, however, that violence would not likely end.

It took a call from Togo’s president to persuade the players to leave the African Cup of Nations; they said they wanted to stay and compete in honor of the assistant coach, team spokesman and Angolan bus driver who died in Friday’s attack.

The government dispatched the presidential plane, while Togo’s Prime Minister Gilbert Houngbo said Angola had not done enough to protect the team after the attack in Cabinda — the oil-rich region in northern Angola which has seen occasional separatist violence.

“We fully understand our government’s decision to leave because they didn’t receive enough guarantees for our security,” forward Thomas Dossevi told The Associated Press. “We as players, we wanted to stay to honor the memory of our dead people, but both positions are understandable.”

Togo team captain Emmanuel Adebayor, speaking in an interview with France’s RMC radio Sunday, said the team had decided finally to “pack our bags and go home” after the Manchester City striker got a call from Togo President Faure Gnassingbe himself urging them to return.

“That’s what made the difference,” Adebayor was quoted as saying in a transcript of his interview on RMC’s Web site.

Boarding the plane, Adebayor told journalists: “We have to mourn our dead. We go back home to do this.”

Togo Sports Minister Christophe Padumhokou Tchao, who was accompanying the team home, told the AP three days of mourning had been declared in his homeland.

“We can’t be in a period of mourning and at the same time be in the festival” of sport, he said. He added Togo had asked organizers to postpone the tournament.

The airport scene was chaotic, with dozens of police struggling against a crowd of journalists. Two planes carrying the players and officials then sat on the tarmac for several hours before taking off.

The tournament began earlier Sunday with an opening ceremony in a Chinese-built stadium in the capital, Luanda, livened by fireworks as well as both traditional and contemporary performers. Several African heads of state attended, including President Rupiah Banda of Zambia and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, whose country will host the World Cup later this year

“Despite the terrorist attack, Cabinda will remain a hosting city,” Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said in an opening speech. “There is no need to be afraid.”

Most top officials of the African Football Confederation, known by its French initials CAF, went Saturday to Cabinda, where some of the injured were still recovering, and implored Togo to stay.

CAF president Issa Hayatou said he’d received a guarantee from Angola Prime Minister Antonio Paulo Kassoma that security would be beefed up for all teams and at all venues.

In a telephone interview with AP on Sunday, Tiburcio Tati Tchingobo, minister of defense in the self-declared Federal State of Cabinda, denied his Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda forces, or FLEC, were responsible for the ambush. He said that whoever was responsible was sparked by a level of frustration that could lead to more violence.

He said his group had no objection to the African Cup of Nations tournament, even with play in Cabinda.

“The tournament can go on, but we are worried about security. We don’t have any problem with our fellow African brothers,” he said, reached on a satellite phone number and saying he was in Cabinda.

In a communique Saturday, Tchingobo’s self-proclaimed independent government said it was irresponsible of CAF’s Hayatou to have ignored warnings from separatists that matches should not be held in Cabinda.

The Angolan information minister blamed FLEC for the attack on the Togolese team. In Sunday’s exclusive interview, Tchingobo said that was “Angolan government manipulation, to tarnish our names, to make us out as terrorists.”

Portugal’s state-run Lusa news agency said FLEC claimed responsibility in a message on Friday.

The conflicting reports could stem from divisions among pro-independence groups in Cabinda. Several claim the name FLEC.

Cabinda’s armed groups have been weakened by factional fighting. But periodic announcements from the Angolan government that the Cabinda uprising has been quelled — either by force or negotiations — have been followed by new outbreaks of violence.

The Angolan government has denied charges from international human rights groups its military has committed atrocities in Cabinda. In Sunday’s exclusive interview, Tchingobo said he feared the attack on the Togolese team would spark a crackdown by Angolan forces in Cabinda after the tournament ends.

“Angola should recognize that we are a sovereign state,” Tchingobo said. “They should pack up and go.”

The separatists argue Cabinda, an oil-rich region cut off from the rest of Angola by a strip of Congo, is distinct culturally and historically. The Angolan government rejects such claims, and its decision to stage part of the African Cup in Cabinda — building a new stadium there for the games — reflects its determination to keep control of the region.

Angola has been struggling to climb back from decades of violence, and its government was banking on the tournament as a chance to show the world it was on the way to recovery.

Cabinda’s unrest is unrelated to — and often overshadowed by — the broader civil war.

Associated Press writers Ebow Godwin in Lome, Togo, Donna Bryson in Johannesburg and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.