Italian ambassador in DR Congo killed in 'attempted kidnapping'

Italy has confirmed that its ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, and an Italian carabinieri police officer were killed Monday while traveling in Congo in a U.N. convoy.

The Foreign Ministry in a brief statement, said Luca Attanasio and the officer were killed in Goma. They were traveling in a convoy of the U.N. stabilization mission in Congo. There were no other details.

The BBC reports that officials at the Virunga National Park say the attack was an attempted kidnapping.

Many armed groups operate in an around the park which borders Rwanda and Uganda. Park rangers are regularly attacked and killed by militias.

Eastern DRC is an area that usually sees rebel attacks. The most recent one in early January claimed 20 lives when militants launched the attack and killed residents in the Mwenda village with machetes and guns.

An administrator for the region of Beni blamed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel group.

The ADF have been based in eastern DRC since 1995. They have not attacked neighboring Uganda for years, but have regularly committed massacres since October 2014 in the Beni region, which have killed more than one thousand people.

The armed group is the deadliest among dozens still active in the Kivu region and southern Ituri.

Since the end of November, ADF attacks have been moving from the far north (Oïcha-Mbau-Beni) to the south-eastern part in the Rwenzori region.