Attanasio’s ambush on the street, they wanted to kidnap the “white men” – Corriere.it

ORand 10.15, Kibumba town, three kilometers from Goma. In the most dangerous savannah of the most dangerous African country, two white jeeps advance. Ahead is a mission of the World Food Program, Behind is the Italian ambassador to the Congo, Luca Attanasio: accompanied by an Italian WFP official, Rocco Leoneand a carabiniere, Vittorio Iacovacci, escorted him. Two drivers, two Congolese bodyguards, seven people in all – a small, discreet convoy, just the UN insignia on the doors. It is an informal mission, consular officer Alfredo Russo was supposed to participate but in the end he stayed home. The ambassador spent Sunday with a Javeriano friend, Father Franco Bordignon, and now in sneakers and dark glasses he is going to Rutshuru to visit a school that must receive food aid. No one wears safety headsets, there are no radio alert links, the road is considered “clean” and relatively safe.

The ambush is quick. Like many around here: a pile of stones in the middle of the Rn4 road, the cars were forced to slow down, to brake. Six, maybe seven men with small arms emerge from the bush. At first it’s a warning, an upward bombardment. Another immediately targets the diplomat’s car and kills the driver, Mustafa Milambo. Ambassador Attanasio, Rocco Leone and Carabiniere Iacovacci are shot down: they are the target, the targets. The bandits give orders in Swahili to the three Italians: “Hurry, walk fast!” – but they are spoken in Kinyarwanda: it is a common Rwandan language both among the Hutu exiles of the Fdlr, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, and among the Ugandan Adf jihadists who boast of ties to ISIS and are furious at these borders of the Congo. Whoever it is it seems in all respects ecstasy. The ambassador and the others are made to walk a few tens of meters. Then the surprise, at least according to the official Kinshasa version: soldiers and government rangers appear out of nowhere, attracted by the bandits’ shots, and there is a shootout. Nobody knows who kills whom. Carabiniere Iacovacci, 30, a Latino from Sonnino, dies immediately. Ambassador Attanasio, 43, from Brianza de Limbiate, wife and three children, was shot in the abdomen and lost a lot of blood. They put him in a truck, Leone’s bodyguard grabs his head: when he arrives at the Goma hospital, about twenty kilometers from the road, there is nothing else to do. Rocco Leone ends up hospitalized, in shock, but without injuries. It is not clear what happened to the others in the convoy: according to some sources they were kidnapped, but Father Bordignon excludes him. It’s even less clear what the killers were after, who certainly didn’t act by accident. Money? Or perhaps a blackmail weapon for energy investments, including Italian ones, in North Kivu?

Ambassador Attanasio had no armored vehicle. He had no real escort. He was not wearing a bulletproof vest. There were no Italian flags to identify their presence. The Congolese and the UN had assured him that this street was quiet. At the same time, the governor of the region, Carly Nzanzu Kasivita, now says she is “surprised” by the mission and has not been informed in advance. Too many things don’t add up. And who and why killed the ambassador, this is clear from the first moment, it is not just a matter of investigation for the Congolese police. The Ros are already flying to the Congo, the Rome Prosecutor’s Office has opened the ritual file. Farnesina asks WFP for a detailed report and a UN investigation to clarify the basis on which Rn4 was deemed safe. Questions should be directed to the already criticized Monusco mission, here since 1999, today one of the largest and most organized in the world, a budget of one billion dollars, an absolute ineffectiveness with its 16 thousand blue helmets: it was the UN, through the WFP, who informed the Italian embassy that an armed escort was not needed. And this despite the fact that three years ago two British tourists were kidnapped in that area, called “Las Tres Antenas”. And in Virunga Park, in the last few years alone, two hundred rangers have died. And on the famous Highway 2 that runs through the paradise of mountain gorillas, it is common for priests, farmers, volunteers to disappear in exchange for ransoms of half a million dollars.