Togo footballers shot in ambush

According to Bijou (who's mother has business interests in Cabinda as well as Kinshasa in DR Congo) the Angolan party were short cutting the agreed method of travel from their training base in Congo DR ~ a separate country to DR Congo and sometimes known as Congo Brazzaville.

The city of Brazzaville sits in the old French Congo and is the capital on the north bank of the Congo River and Kinshasa on the South Bank is the capital of the vast former Belgian Congo once known as Zaire.

Cabinda is situated at the mouth of the Congo River on the South bank and shares it's border with DR Congo thus allowing that country a narrow access to the Atlantic Ocean before the rest of the southerly coast is Angola.

To understand this situation you have to appreciate that the old colonial powers divided up these "territories" ~ Angola was Portuguese and now there is the age old problem of the Cabindans enjoying a high standard of living due to their oil revenues whilst the surrounding areas are poverty stricken. Angola sufered a civil war that raged for 27 years and the Cabindans have a separatist movement who want total independence from Angola rather than the tax revenue paying autonomy they currently live under and it is this campaign the attack was designed to publicise.

Had the Togolese FA kept to the arrangements and flown to Cabinda via the Angolan capital of Luanda from Congo Brazzaville, the security would have taken care of them, as it is they "did their own thing" and suffered the consequences.

Again, according to Bijou; her family who have members of it living in Kinshasa, Cabina and Luanda ALWAYS travel through Luanda for the very reason of insecurity making the land crossing that proved so deadly for the Togolese.