Italy buries ambassador, driver killed in Congo

ROME: Italy paid final respects on Thursday to its ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was killed with his bodyguard and driver during an ambush on a UN convoy.

Luca Atanasio, 43, was shot dead on Monday ater unidentified assailants ambushed a two-vehicle convoy from the UN’S World Food Programme ( WFP) in which he was travelling.

The group was en route to a school programme in the eastern province of North Kivu, near the Rwanda border.

Atanasio’s bodyguard from Italy’s Carabinieri police forces, Vitorio Iacovacci, 30, was also killed, along with a Congolese WFP driver, Mustapha Milambo, 56.

To the strains of Chopin’s funeral march, carabinieri bore the coffins of the two Italians, who were repatriated on Tuesday, into Rome’s Saint Mary of the Angels church for a state funeral.

Along with the families of Atanasio and Iacovacci, Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the speakers of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and several government ministers attended the ceremony presided over by Cardinal Angelo De Donatis.

“Today we feel the anguish of three families, two nations and the entire family of nations. An anguish because the peace so longed for is not present because the promises of justice have been betrayed,” De Donatis said in his homily.

“Luca, Vitorio and Mustapha have been torn from this world by the clutches of a stupid and ferocious violence that only brings pain,” he added.

Before the funeral, Draghi had a meeting with Patrick Luabeya, a “special envoy” of DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, “focused on (Monday’s) tragic deaths,” the Italian premier’s office said.

Passionate about Africa, Atanasio was the first Italian diplomat to be killed since 1990.

The European Union’s ambassador to the DRC, Jean-marc Chataigner, told Rai television that Atanasio liked to go “into the field.” “He had a special atachment to the east of the country, an area forgoten by the international community,” Chataigner said. “I think he also wanted to make his contribution to the reconstruction of peace.”