Togo weighs Africa cup withdrawal
Football team to decide on tournament participation after gun attack in Angola.
“They have seen one of their team-mates have a bullet in his body, who is crying, who is losing consciousness and everything.”
“I don’t think they will be ready to give their life.”
Adebayor said that the team would only stay if their security could be guaranteed.
Government assurances
Organisers have said that the tournament, which is due to kick off on Sunday, will go ahead, but African football officials will meet the Angolan government beforehand to seek assurances that players would be protected.
Issa Hayatou, the president of the Confederation of African Football, will meet Paulo Kassoma, the prime minister, in Luanda, the capital on Saturday.
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“They will meet to take decisions to guarantee the smooth running of the competition,” a CAF statement said.
“The Confederation of African Football is terribly saddened by this event and express its total support as well as sympathy to the entire Togolese delegation.”
Al Jazeera’s Andy Richardson, reporting from Luanda, said that he expected that players from most nations would be considering their participation despite the organisers’ assurances.
“I think a lot of players involved here, a lot of clubs that they play for, and obviously their families back home are not as convinced as officials,” he said.
“There are some multimillion-dollar players up there in Cabinda and a lot of them have clubs back in Europe who are obviously very concerned about them being exposed into an area where it seems security cannot be guaranteed.”
Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Ghana were also to be based in Cabinda, which is separated from the rest of Angola by a slice of Democratic Republic of Congo, for the tournament.
Cabinda separatists
The Togo team had been training in DR Congo and were travelling to Angola by bus ahead of their match against Ghana on Monday.
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However, local official questioned why the team were travelling by bus rather than air.
“The rules are clear: no team should travel by bus. I don’t know what led them to do this. The incident would not have happened in the city,” Virgilio Santos, an organising official, was quoted by A Bola newspaper as saying.
The Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (Flec), which has been fighting for independence for three decades, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was aimed at the team’s military escorts.
“This operation is only the start of a series of targeted actions that will continue in all the territory of Cabinda,” it said in a statement on Portugal’s Lusa news agency.
Flec signed a peace deal with Angola’s government in 2006, but in recent months has claimed a spate of attacks on the military and foreign oil and construction workers in the province.