robberies and kidnapping for income. Efforts at nature conservation have had contradictory effects, for example when farms were destroyed within Kibirizi, and soldiers and park guards were sent in to patrol, people migrated even further within the park to land controlled by the FDLR, where they could rent small plots of land. The local community has developed negative feeling towards park personnel and the military. Clashes occurred in 2015 when a local Mai-Mai group in Binza (north Bwisha) attempted to take back control of region, with the objective of reinstalling fishing activities and allowing the population to return, killing a park guard and 11-15 soldiers. Five rangers were killed in August 2017 near Lake Edward in a militia attack. Five rangers and a driver were killed in April 2018. Since beginning of the armed conflict, armed groups killed 175 park rangers until April 2018. In May 2018, a ranger was killed when defending two tourists who were kidnapped. They were subsequently released unharmed. As a consequence, the park remained closed to visitors from June 2018 until February 2019. In April 2020 at least 12 park rangers were killed by militia men attacking a civilian convoy. Again in January 2021, armed men killed at least six rangers and wounded several others in an ambush in the national park. On 22 February 2021, Italy's ambassador to the DRC who was travelling with the World Food Programme about 15km north of Goma, Luca Attanasio, as well as Italian military police officer Vittorio Iacovacci and Congolese driver Moustapha Milambo, were killed in the gunfire when a militia that had kidnapped their convoy, and had brought them into the park, was met by park rangers who managed to free four people. Geography Virunga National Park is located in the Congo − Nile watershed area. Its northern sector encompasses part of the Semliki River basin, as well as savanna and montane forest of the Albertine Rift. In altitude, this sector ranges from in the Puemba River valley to the highest peak of Mount Stanley at within . The national park's central sector encompasses about two thirds of Lake Edward up to the international border with Uganda in the east. A narrow corridor of width along the lake's western bank connects the northern and southern sectors of the national park. The southern sector stretches to the shores of Lake Kivu and encompasses Nyamulagira, Nyiragongo and Mikeno volcanoes