Tensions had been higher than usual in the days prior. Among the two thousand 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. On Saturday, the Congolese saw the two aircraft in the sky, increasing their fear and suspicions. Suspicion that paratroopers were coming became certainty. Possessed by terror and fury, the soldiers jumped onto trucks bound for the airfield and for the UN canteen, a small villa one kilometer away, where Maggiore (Major) Parmeggiani and other Italians were having lunch with Major Maud, leader of the Malaysian garrison. Upon the arrival of the Congolese, more and more numerous and threatening, the unarmed Italians tried to barricade themselves in the building but were taken prisoner. The few Malaysian guards were soon overpowered and manhandled. First to die was Medic Tenente Remotti while trying to escape. The twelve survivors were assaulted, who were by then bloody and bruised, were loaded on two trucks with Remotti's body, taken into uptown and unloaded at the end of the main street, Avenue Lumumba Liberateur, in front of the prison, a low red-brick building surrounded by a wall. At dusk the Italian airmen were finished off with two bursts of small arms. Then a crowd got hold of the butchered bodies and cut them up with machetes. They were falsely accused of supplying weapons to Katangan secessionists. 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. 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. Another Italian had been killed in Congo some days earlier during an ambush by guerrillas: Italian Red Cross Lieutenant Raffaele Soru, was also decorated with the Gold Medal of Military Valor. United Nations and Congolese response On 13 November General Victor Lundula dispatched two army officials with the accompaniment of two UN officers to Kindu