Italians mourned Tuesday the death of Luca Attanasio, the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was killed in an ambush with his bodyguard and their driver while participating in a humanitarian convoy with the World Food Program.
The national media was full of tributes to mr. Attanasio (43), who was praised as the youthful and humanitarian face of Italian diplomacy.
The murder of mr. Attanasio has hit a deep nerve in Italy, which has been under tension over the past year due to the pandemic and a political crisis that has created weeks of uncertainty. Many Italians also remain sensitive to the plight of their citizens abroad after the brutal murder of a graduate student, Giulio Regeni, in Egypt in 2016.
Photos of mr. Attanasio surrounded by Congolese children, or with his wife and three young daughters, dominated the front pages of Italian dailies.
‘Luca and Vittorio. The best of Italy, ”reads the headline of the Turin daily La Stampa, referring to Vittorio Iacovacci, the 30-year-old Italian military police officer who, along with the ambassador and their Congolese manager, Mustapha Milambo of the World Food Program, died. .
“Yesterday I was unable to express the deep sadness of the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our sincere closeness to his family,” wrote Elisabetta Belloni, the ministry’s secretary general, in an editorial in the daily Corriere della Sera. “Because silence and emotion prevailed.”
“Luca was a generous person who wanted to do good,” Belloni said. “He believed that Italy – with the European Union and the United Nations” could play an important role in promoting development and peace. He dedicated himself to humility, but also with absolute dedication and readiness. ”
Pope Francis on Tuesday expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, the diplomatic corps and the military police “for the disappearance of these servants of peace and law.”
Prosecutors in Rome have launched an investigation into the crash and sent a team of investigators to Goma, the capital of North Kivu, near where the murder took place. The president and high-ranking officials of the Democratic Republic of Congo have pledged to come under the tragedy, which took place in an area near the border with Rwanda known for violence.
Dozens of armed groups are taking part in kidnappings and acts of violence in the area. Rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda are the largest foreign armed group operating in Congo. The rebel group denied on Tuesday that they were involved in the attack and said their men were far from the area.
The Congolese president, Félix Tshisekedi, and his wife met with Mr. Attanasio’s wife, Zakia Seddiki, meets, who is the president of a non-governmental organization in Congo that helps women and children in need.
In a statement read on national TV, Mr. Tshisekedi said the government had sent a team of investigators to Goma so that light could be shed on these heinous crimes as soon as possible. “
It was unclear whether Mr. Attanasio and his bodyguard were shot as a result of an abduction attempt that went awry, and whether he was killed during a shooting incident between the armed group and the rangers and a Congolese army unit in the area.
Mr. Attanasio is on his way to Rutshuru, in the north, to visit a World Food Program project to feed school children, partly by the Italian government, in a convoy of two cars. The World Food Program said the road they took had previously been cleared for travel without safety attendants.
The night before the attack, Mr. Attanasio and mr. Iacovacci with a small group of Italian expatriates in Goma.
“He said he admires our work on the front lines and is proud of us here,” said Miriam Ruscio, the Italian head of programs for the AVSI aid group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who attended the dinner. Attanasio said.
“It’s devastating to know he’s gone,” she said. Ruscio said.
In a video interview published by the Italian news agency Ansa, Salvatore Attanasio, the ambassador’s father, said: “We are devastated, it is an unpredictable loss.”
He added: “These are unfair things that should never ever happen.”
Steve Wembi reported from Kinshasa.