This photo taken and handout Tuesday by the Italian Foreign Ministry shows Carabinieri police officers carrying the flag-draped coffins of slain Italian Ambassador Luca Attanasio and Italian Carabinieri police officer Vittorio Iacovacci, upon the arrival late Tuesday. - AFP

ROME: Italy said yesterday it has asked the United Nations to launch an investigation into the killing of its ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The envoy, Luca Attanasio, 43, died on Monday after a World Food Programme (WFP) convoy was ambushed in a dangerous part of the eastern DRC near the border with Rwanda.

Attanasio's Italian bodyguard and a Congolese driver were also killed. "We have formally asked WFP (World Food Programme) and the UN to open an investigation to clarify what happened, the reasons behind the security arrangements used and who was responsible for these decisions," Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told parliament.

Di Maio's comments came the morning after the bodies of the two Italians were returned by military plane to Rome. "We expect, in the briefest possible time, clear and exhaustive answers," Di Maio said. An Italian military plane carrying Attanasio and Iacovacci's flag-draped coffins was met at Rome's Ciampino airport by Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Foreign minister Luigi Di Maio and defence minister Lorenzo Guerini joined him to meet Attanasio's widow and three daughters, who flew home with the bodies.

On Monday, the DRC's interior ministry blamed the killings on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan Hutu rebel group. But the FDLR rejected the allegation and instead blamed the Rwandan and DRC militaries.

Di Maio said the party was relying on UN protocol during the trip from the capital Kinshasa to Goma, some 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) east, but that Attanasio had "full power" to decide how and where to move within DRC. "The mission took place at the invitation of the United Nations. So even the car journey took place within the organizational framework set up by the World Food Programme," Di Maio.

The WFP is a branch of the UN which focuses on hunger and food security, and which was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. Di Maio said a team of Italian police had already been dispatched to the DRC for an initial investigation and others would follow.

Opened fire

In addressing the Chamber of Deputies, Di Maio provided preliminary details of how the attack on the two vehicles unfolded in the mountainous, thickly forested area about 25 kilometers from Goma, between 10am and 11am local time. Six attackers "allegedly forced the vehicles to stop by placing obstacles on the road and firing several shots from small arms in the air," Di Maio said.

Although the sound of gunfire attracted park rangers from the nearby Virunga National Park, a wildlife reserve, and army soldiers, the attackers ordered the members of the convoy out of the vehicles and into the bush, Di Maio said, citing information from the governor of North Kivu. - AFP