Togo footballers attacked by mistake

A senior official of the dissident group that launched a fatal ambush on the Togo football team has expressed his "condolences", saying rebels attacked their bus by mistake. Rodrigues Mingas, secretary general of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (Flec), said his fighters had meant to attack security guards as the convoy passed through the Angolan province of Cabinda, which sits wholly inside the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"This attack was not aimed at the Togolese players but at the Angolan forces at the head of the convoy," Mingas told France 24 television. "So it was pure chance that the gunfire hit the players. We don't have anything to do with the Togolese and we present our condolences to the African families and the Togo government. We are fighting for the total liberation of Cabinda."

Cabinda is responsible for half of Angola's oil production. Before the attack Flec was not thought to be a serious risk. Last month an Angolan minister without portfolio, António Bento Bembe, who is a former Flec fighter, said the group no longer existed. He claimed all that remained of Flec was a few individuals who were trying to attract unhappy Cabindans with false statements.

Source: Mail & Guardian

One dead in attack on Togo soccer team

Gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Togo's national soccer squad to the top African tournament in Angola on Friday, killing the driver and wounding nine others, including two players, a Togo team official said. Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor, who was on the bus but escaped unharmed, said his team might quit the African Nations Cup, where some of soccer's most valuable stars are due to play.

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, the team official said. An Angolan minister called the attack in Cabinda, which produces most of Angola's oil, an "act of terrorism". A 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 Nations Cup, 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. 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.

Source: mail & Guardian