Six Italians shot in Germany in mafia feud

By Staff
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DUISBURG, Germany, Aug 15 (Reuters) Six Italian men were shot dead in the German city of Duisburg early today in an execution-style killing linked to a mafia feud.

Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said in Rome the shootings appeared to be the latest chapter in a long-running dispute between two mafia clans in the southern region of Calabria, home to the 'Ndrangheta organised crime group.

The victims, all shot in the head, were aged between 16 and 38 and some were related to each other.

The brazen attack in a foreign country is unprecedented and Italian investigators said they feared a bloody riposte by victims' relatives in keeping with the tradition of vendetta.

''We are now trying to prevent a similar tragedy (in Calabria),'' Amato told a news conference.

German police in the run-down northwestern city of Duisburg confirmed the victims came from the Calabria area and did not rule out the possibility of a mafia connection.

They are looking for two men spotted running from the scene.

''We are exploring all possibilities, we are excluding nothing,'' Heinz Sprenger, head of the murder commission, told reporters.

The shootings took place close to an Italian restaurant called Da Bruno where a birthday celebration had taken place.

All the victims either worked at the restaurant or had some connection with it, said Sprenger.

The victims belonged to one of two rival clans based in the town of San Luca. Their simmering feud began in 1991 and has escalated in the past eight months. Overall 15 people have been killed.

SHOTS HEARD The 'Ndrangheta has outgrown its more famous Sicilian counterpart, the Cosa Nostra, thanks to clan loyalties ensured by blood relationships and arranged marriages, and is now the leading organised criminal group for drug trafficking.

''This was an attack to assert power. It is not just the clan that comes out stronger, it is the 'Ndrangheta as a whole,'' said Alberto Cisterna, a top mafia national prosecutor.

Italian investigators said the 'Ndrangheta was well established in Germany but has traditionally kept a low profile.

Police found the six in, or lying next to, two vehicles near the city's train station after a passer-by heard shots at about 0600 hrs. Five were already dead and the sixth died on the way to hospital.

''There were many shots and shot wounds,'' said Sprenger.

German television showed pictures of a distraught middle-aged woman arriving at the scene shouting ''Sebastiano!'' The cars, one a VW Golf and the other a small Opel delivery van, were registered in German towns.

The shootings have stunned Germany, where gang crime on this scale is rare although in February, seven people were shot dead in an attack on a Chinese restaurant in northern Germany.

Italians are Germany's second biggest immigrant group after Turks. Many from the poor south came to Germany as ''guest workers'' after World War Two and helped fuel the country's economic boom.

About 540,000 Italians live here and are mostly well integrated.

At the end of 2006, about 3,500 Italians lived in Duisburg, a city in Germany's industrial heartland, the Ruhr, that has been hit by high levels of unemployment.

REUTERS SLD BST1850

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