The Italian ambassador to Congo and an Italian carabineri police officer have been killed Monday whereas travelling in Congo in a UN convoy, the Overseas Ministry stated.
In a short assertion, the ministry stated Luca Attanasio and the officer have been killed in Goma, the jap regional capital. They have been travelling in a convoy of the UN stabilization mission in Congo.
The envoy, Luca Attanasio, “died of his wounds” after gunmen opened fireplace on the convoy, officers in Congo informed reporters. “The Congolese Armed Forces are combing to seek out out who the assailants are,” the Congolese military stated.
In January 2019, Congo skilled its first peaceable democratic switch of energy since independence in 1960 following the election of President Felix Tshisekedi.
He succeeded strongman Joseph Kabila in a disputed election marked by allegations of large-scale fraud and suspicions of a backroom deal by Kabila to put in Tshisekedi over an opposition candidate who, based on leaked electoral knowledge, was the actual winner.
The resource-rich nation the dimensions of Western Europe suffered by means of probably the most brutal colonial reigns ever identified earlier than present process a long time of corrupt dictatorship.
Again-to-back civil wars later drew in numerous neighbouring international locations. And plenty of insurgent teams have come and gone through the U.N. mission’s years of operation, at occasions invading the jap regional capital, Goma, the place the ambassador was killed.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission, identified by its acronym MONUSCO, has been working to attract down its 15,000-troop presence and switch its safety work to Congolese authorities.