South African doctors are planning to leave bullet fragments in the stomach of Togo goalkeeper Kodjovi “Dodji” Obilale because it could cause more damage if they try to remove them.
The 25-year-old Obilale was shot in the lower back Friday when gunmen attacked the bus carrying Togo’s national team to Angola for the African Cup of Nations. The bullet fragmented, and some pieces have become lodged in his stomach.
Removing them “sometimes causes more damage than leaving them behind,” said trauma specialist Ken Boffard, who is part of Obilale’s medical team at Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg.
PHOTO: AFP
Three people were killed and eight injured in the attack.
The Togolese team was arriving in Angola for the African Cup when they were ambushed in an attack blamed on militants fighting for the independence of Cabinda. The region is cut off from the rest of Angola by a strip of Congo.
Obilale was operated on after being flown from Cabinda to Johannesburg on Saturday, and he has been under sedation since, with a ventilator to help him breathe. Boffard said no more operations are planned.
“I am happy to report that his condition has stabilized. He is in good condition at the moment,” Boffard said Monday at a news conference. “We expect him to stay on the ventilator for the next couple of days and we don’t expect his condition to change very much with the next couple of days. Overall, we are happy with his progress.”
Boffard said it was too soon to say whether Obilale, who plays for French minor league club Pontivy, would recover enough to play again, but that doctors were optimistic. He said Obilale was able to move his legs when he was admitted on Saturday.
“He is built like a goalkeeper,” Boffard said. “That is very much in his favor. So his condition was reasonable when he got down here.”
Efraim Kramer, a FIFA medical officer who has been monitoring Obilale’s case, said Obilale’s future in soccer “will have to do with what’s in his head or what’s in his heart.”
Kramer said he was giving FIFA president Sepp Blatter and other officials updates on Obilale every few hours.
“An incident like this is a tragic incident and they see it in that light,” Kramer said at the hospital briefing. “And they are obviously concerned about the people that succumbed and their families as well as the patient lying here in intensive care and their families.”
Meanwhile, authorities arrested two separatists in Cabinda, a prosecutor announced yesterday.
According to a brief statement from Antonio Nito, the prosecutor in charge of Cabinda Province, two unidentified members of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda forces (FLEC), were captured on Sunday near the site of Friday’s shooting.
A FLEC leader reportedly in exile in France said yesterday his group had been targeting Angolan troops escorting the Togolese team.
“In war, anything can happen, this is only the beginning,” Rodrigues Mingas, who calls himself the group’s leader, told France-Info radio.
However, an organization that reunites former FLEC members who started a peace process with the Angolan government in 2006 said that the attack had likely been made by dissident FLEC members.
“This attack has been committed by armed gangsters who just want to sabotage the peace process,” said Andre Puango, coordinator of the Cabinda forum for dialogue.
Three days of mourning were declared in Togo, where sobbing relatives met a plane late on Sunday carrying the victims of the attack. Weeping women threw themselves to the ground and had to be helped up.
“Our boys went to Angola to celebrate the best in African football but they came back with dead bodies and bullet wounds,” said Togbe Aklassou, a traditional ruler from the Be area of Lome.
Togo’s players had wanted to compete to honor the dead, but their government dispatched the presidential plane after saying it was not safe for them to stay.
Togolese Prime Minister Gilbert Houngbo said Angola had not done enough to protect the team after the attack in Cabinda, an oil-rich region that 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 said. “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 on Sunday, said the team had decided finally to “pack our bags and go home” after the Manchester City striker got a call from Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe himself urging them to return.
Boarding the plane, Adebayor said: “We have to mourn our dead. We go back home to do this.”
In the tournament’s opening match on Sunday, Mali and host Angola tied 4-4. The first match to be played in Cabinda was scheduled for yesterday.
“Despite the terrorist attack, Cabinda will remain a hosting city,” Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said in a speech at the opening ceremony before the Mali-Angola match. “There is no need to be afraid.”
Mingas, who calls himself FLEC’s leader, said yesterday his group was behind the attack.
But another FLEC official in Cabinda has denied responsibility.
In a telephone interview with reporters on Sunday, Tiburcio Tati Tchingobo said his group had no objection to the 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,” said Tchingobo, minister of defense in the self-declared Federal State of Cabinda, when reached on a satellite phone number.
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