U19 World Handball Championship: ten Burundian players reported missing
Burundian players cannot be found in Croatia, where they were competing in the U19 World Handball Championship (2-13 August).
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The Burundian team were taking part in the U19 World Handball Championship (2-13 August) in Croatia. Their match against Bahrain on Thursday 10 August did not take place. The reason? Half the team had disappeared. Ten players were reported to have fled and were said to be actively sought by Croatian police. "These are ten young men, born in 2006, who left a university residence in Rijeka yesterday (Wednesday) at around 15:30 and headed in an unknown direction," regional police said in a statement. Police launched an operation "to find the missing people and establish the facts and circumstances of their disappearance".
Burundi were also due to face New Zealand on Friday 11 August, but the team again forfeited the match. The situation has deeply upset the president of the Burundian Handball Federation. "We are in shock, both us as an association and the parents of our national-team players, with whom we are in constant contact. We ask anyone who can help us find our boys to do so. I don’t even know how we would return home without them," said federation president Dauphin Nikobamye, quoted by Croatian outlet Index, in comments reported by Le Parisien.