The Italian ambassador killed in an ambush in the Democratic Republic of Congo while travelling in a UN convoy was "betrayed" by someone close to the family, his widow said in an interview published Friday.

Luca Attanasio, 43, was shot dead on Monday after unidentified assailants ambushed a two-vehicle convoy from the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in the eastern North Kivu province, near the Rwanda border.

The ambassador's bodyguard from Italy's Carabinieri police forces, Vittorio Iacovacci, 30, and a Congolese WFP driver, Mustapha Milambo, 56, were also killed. Four others survived the attack.

"Luca was betrayed by someone close to us, to our family," Attanasio's widow, Zakia Seddiki, told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

"Someone who knew his movements has spoken, has sold him out and betrayed him," she said without giving more detail as investigations are under way.

Attanasio, who had been Italy's chief diplomat in Kinshasa since 2017, lived in the capital with Seddiki and their three daughters. He was given a state funeral in Rome on Thursday, and was due to be buried in his home town of Limbiate, near Milan, on Saturday.

The foreign ministry rebutted a media report on Friday charging that a request made by Attanasio in 2018 to double his embassy security detail to four Carabinieri officers was denied.

In fact, said the ministry, the request was made ahead of elections in December 2018 in a "climate of great political and social tensions" and the reinforcement was granted for the requested period.

- Survivor speaks -

Also on Friday, WFP deputy director for DRC Rocco Leone, a survivor of the attack, said the group was "cooperating fully" with the three separate investigations -- by the UN's security department, as well as Italian and Congolese authorities.

"The experience of what happened on Monday was both tragic and traumatic and I cannot begin to express the depth of my sadness about the lives lost," Leone said in a statement, adding there had been some "speculation" by the media about what happened.

"While at this moment I cannot go into the details of the incident, it is incumbent on all four of us who survived to share as much information as we can on the matter, and we are all ready to do so."

According to Congolese and Italian authorities, the convoy was ambushed three kilometres (two miles) from its destination, the town of Kiwanja, where the UN convoy was due to visit a school.

After shooting Milambo, six assailants with AK-47s assault weapons forced the occupants of the two vehicles to follow them into the Virunga National Park, a wildlife reserve.

When nearby rangers and Congolese soldiers alerted by the gunfire approached the assailants, Attanasio and Iacovacci were shot.

DRC authorities accused the Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), who have denied any involvement and instead blamed members of the Rwandan and Congolese armies.

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