KINSHASA, Congo – Italian ambassador to Congo, an Italian carabinieri police officer and their Congolese driver, were killed on Monday when gunmen attacked a UN convoy visiting a school in eastern Congo, the Italian ministry said of foreign affairs and residents said.
The ambush occurred when the convoy of Goma, Congo’s eastern capital, traveled to visit a World Food Program school project in Rutshuru, the UN agency said.
The WFP said the attack took place on a road previously cleared for travel without security escorts, and he asked for more information from local officials about the attack. Eastern Congo is home to a multitude of rebel groups, all competing for control of the mineral-rich Central African nation, such as the size of Western Europe.
Luca Attanasio, the Italian ambassador to the country since 2017, carabinieri officer Vittorio Iacovacci and their manager have died, the foreign minister said. Other members of the convoy were injured and taken to a hospital, WFP said.
The attack, a few kilometers north of Goma, was just next to Virunga National Park. North Kivu Governor Carly Nzanzu Kasivita said the UN vehicles were hijacked by the attackers and taken into the bushes. The Congolese army and park rangers for the Virunga National Park came to help those who were attacked, he said.
“There was a fire. The attackers shot at the bodyguard and the ambassador, “the governor said, adding that the ambassador later succumbed to his wounds.
Attanasio, a 43-year-old career diplomat, left behind a wife and three young children.
The attack took place in the same area where two Britons were abducted in 2018 by unknown armed men, said Mambo Kaway, head of a local civil society group.
“The situation is very tense,” he added.
More than 2,000 civilians were killed in eastern Congo last year by violence by armed groups whose brutal attacks also displaced more than 5.2 million people in what the UN calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Marie Tumba Nzenza, Congo’s Foreign Minister, sent her condolences and promised the Italian government that the Congolese government would do everything in its power to find those behind the killings.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Mario Draghi also expressed their condolences to the families of the victims.
“The circumstances of this brutal attack are still unclear and no attempt will be spared to shed light on what happened,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said.
Di Maio flies from Brussels to Rome to meet with Draghi and to inform Italian lawmakers about the attack. The prosecutor’s office in Rome regularly conducts investigations into Italians who are victims abroad.
A special investigation unit of Carabinieri is on its way to Kinshasha and is expected to arrive on Tuesday, Italian state TV reported.
After serving in diplomatic roles in Switzerland, Morocco and Nigeria, Attanasio was appointed at the Italian Embassy in Kinshasa in September 2017.
Last October, he was awarded the Nassiriya International Peace Prize during a ceremony held in a church in southern Italy. Attanasio is quoted as “contributing to the achievement of important humanitarian projects, and distinguishing himself for altruism, dedication and the spirit of service to people in difficult circumstances,” La Repubblica reported.
It quoted Attanasio as saying that “everything we take for granted in Italy is not in the Congo, where unfortunately there are so many problems to solve.”
Attanasio described the role of the ambassador ‘above all being close to the Italians, but also contributing to the achievement of peace’. About 1,000 Italians live in Congo.
Congo suffered through one of the world’s most brutal colonial rule before undergoing decades of corrupt dictatorship. Rugby civil wars later drew a number of neighboring countries. In January 2019, Congo experienced its first peaceful democratic transfer of power since independence in 1960 after the election of President Felix Tshisekedi.
The UN peacekeeping mission is working to establish more than 17,000 troops in the country and to hand over its security work to Congolese authorities.