Italian Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) Luca Attanasio and two other people have been killed in an attack on a UN convoy in the African country’s restive east.
The convoy from the World Food Programme (WFP) was attacked at 10:30am during an attempted kidnapping near the town of Kanyamahoro, about 16km north of the regional capital, Goma, a spokesperson for Virunga National Park said.
Attanasio and a male Italian military police officer traveling with him were killed, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
A driver also died in the attack, diplomatic sources and local officials said.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
Attanasio died of his wounds in the UN hospital in Goma. Married with three children, he had been Italy’s head of mission in Kinshasa since 2017 and was made ambassador in 2019.
The UN’s peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance mission in the DR Congo is one of the biggest and most dangerous such operations in the world.
Attanasio was in Goma for a series of meetings. He had visited a WFP school canteen on Monday morning, and was traveling to the town of Rutshuru to view a community feeding project when the convoy was ambushed, humanitarian officials said.
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