Kindu atrocity

After protests, democratic movements, increasing cost, and international pressure made their continued position untenable, Belgium agreed to a transition to Congolese self-governance.

Major Cold War and financial interests played a part in making the situation even more serious by favoring the secession of two regions, South Kasai and Katanga.

On the morning of November 11, 1961, the two aircraft took off from the capital city Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) to supply the small Malaysian United Nations garrison controlling the airfield not far from Kindu, on the edge of the equatorial forest.

Among the 2,000 Congolese soldiers in Kindu, rumors had spread that an airdrop by Tshombe's parachutists was imminent; Gizenga's troops, operating 500 kilometers due south in northern Katanga, had been bombed by Katangese aircraft for months.

[3] The militiamen spread rumors that the Italian aviators were flying towards Katanga and had been tricked into landing at Kindu by control tower personnel; however, special correspondent Alberto Ronchey (for the Italian newspaper La Stampa) found out a few days later that the control tower had been out of order for months ahead of the killings.

[4] It was only in February 1962 that the remains of those Italians, martyrs of a peacekeeping mission, were discovered in two long and tight pits in the cemetery at Tokolote, a small village near the Lualaba River, on the edge of the woods.

Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula held a closed session, after which he denounced the UN's actions and declared their investigative commission unnecessary in the face of Lundula's and Gbenye's report.

A monument to the Kindu victims can be found at the entrance of Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, and another was erected in Pisa.