"It is with deep sorrow that the Farnesina [the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation] confirms the death, today in Goma, of the Ambassador of Italy to the Democratic Republic of Congo Luca Attanasio and of a soldier from the Carabinieri," the Italian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.Al-Ain says that Attanasio went to the Congo convinced of the importance to aid the country which has suffered from insecurity. He sought to “build peace,” the article notes. Eastern Congo has seen conflict for decades, since the early 1990s. The area was impacted by the neighboring genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s and by wars in its aftermath that saw changes in government, UN intervention and various other African countries intervene.
According to the report in the UAE, the slain ambassador was one of Italy’s youngest at 43 years old. The report says that his wife was from Morocco and he had three daughters. He grew up in the province of Monza and Biranza in Lombardy in northern Italy. He graduated from Luigi Bocconi Commercial University in 2001 and soon moved to the Foreign Ministry in 2003. After a posting to Africa, he was also Italy’s Consul General in Casablanca from 2010 to 2013.
In 2015 he was posted to Nigeria and in September 2017, assumed his current position as chief of mission in Kinshasa, which he held until his death. The report notes that the mayor of Monza County remembered him as "a boy who always smiles.”Al-Ain noted that the ambassador’s wife, Zakia Seddiki, is from Morocco and was herself the president of an association that aided children and mothers in the Congo. That organization is called Mama Sophia and lists her as president. The ambassador and his wife had received recognition for their work.
It is relatively rare for ambassadors to be killed in their work. US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was murdered in Benghazi in 2012 by terrorists. Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov was assassinated in Turkey in 2016 by a Turkish police officer and extremist. Italy’s ambassador Attanasio was travelling near the border with Rwanda when his convoy was attacked by an armed group.