Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his bodyguard, and a World Food Program driver were killed on Monday in an assault on their convoy in the east of the country, Italy and the United Nations said.
At around 10:15 a.m., the convoy was struck. A spokesman for the Virunga National Park told Reuters (0815 GMT) during an attempted abduction near the town of Kanyamahoro, about 25 km (15 miles) north of the regional capital Goma.
The Italian government has reported in a statement the deaths of Ambassador Luca Attanasio, 43, Italian military policeman Vittorio Iacovacci, 30, and a Congolese driver whose name has not been released.
The driver worked for the U.N. In a statement, the World Food Programme added that a number of other passengers were injured.
In and around Virunga, which lies along Congo’s borders with Rwanda and Uganda, hundreds of armed groups operate. Park rangers have been targeted repeatedly and last month, six were killed in an ambush.
Carly Nzanzu Kasivita, the governor of North Kivu province, told Reuters that the attackers stopped the convoy by firing warning shots. They killed the driver, and when park rangers opened fire, they led the others into the forest. The bodyguard was killed by the attackers and the ambassador also died, Nzanzu said.
Marie Ntumba Nzeza, Congo’s foreign minister, said, “I promise the Italian government that the government of my country will do everything to find out who is behind this terrible murder.”
CLEARED FOR TRAVEL
The WFP said the delegation was on its way to Rutshuru to visit a school feeding program. It claimed that the road had been cleared previously for travel without security escorts.
In the back of a park authority jeep and the broken window of a WFP truck, images posted on social media showed Attanasio lying in a man’s arms
In a tweet, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said, “It was with great shock and immense sorrow that I learned of the death of our Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo and a Carabinieri policeman today.”
“The conditions of this brutal assault are still unclear and no effort will be spared to shed light on what has happened.”
When Di Maio heard the news and cut short his visit to return to Italy, he was in Brussels for a European Union conference.
Attanasio has been Italy’s head of mission in Kinshasa since 2017 and was made ambassador in 2019, according to the ministry website. According to his Facebook profile, he was married and had three young daughters.
“He was an enthusiastic young diplomat who was very sensitive to social problems,” Mauro Garofolo told the Rome-based Sant’Egidio charity. “He followed our work closely, such as our program to assist HIV/AIDS sufferers.”
Sitting on Central Africa’s forest-cloaked volcanoes and home to more than half the world’s mountain gorillas, Virunga draws thousands of visitors each year.
The attack on Monday was in the same village where two British tourists were abducted briefly in 2018, causing the park to close for nine months to tourists.
