Italy's ambassador and guards killed in Congo
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed assailants ambushed a convoy of the World Food Programme, killing the Italian ambassador Luca Attanasio as well as his guard and driver. The attack took place in the resource-rich area where DRC meets Uganda and Rwanda. The Interior Ministry has blamed Hutu rebels.
The tentacles of Jihadism
La Repubblica believes that Isis terrorist militias are behind the attack:
“All eyes are on the recent Jihadist infiltrations of various countries in East and Central Africa, from Somalia to northern Mozambique. In the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces), a Ugandan group which has recently teamed up with Isis. ... The new president of the DRC, Félix Tshisekedi, warned last year that Jihadists were invading eastern Congo.”
Our mobile phones are spattered with blood
The attack throws a spotlight on a civil war that has been raging for more than a quarter of a century and for which the West is also to blame, Il Manifesto comments:
“Since the death of the dictator Mobutu in 1997, the then Zaire and now Democratic Republic of Congo has been subject to a constant process of territorial fragmentation. This process is promoted by certain multinationals which, with the help of intermediary paramilitary groups, are carrying on their business unperturbed, at the expense of the local population. ... Do we want to keep believing that our mobile phones are so cheap because of the competition among providers and not because of the slave labour that delivers the raw materials? The truth is coming to light, and so is our personal and collective responsibility.”