KEY POINTS:
SAN LUCA, Italy - Police banned funeral processions for five of six Italians gunned down in Germany in a suspected mafia feud when they were buried in southern Italy.
Extra police were drafted in to the mountain villages of Calabria to prevent further violence in a 16-year-old feud inside the Calabrian underworld organisation, the 'Ndrangheta, that has claimed up to 20 lives.
In a small church in the village of San Luca, at the epicentre of the feud, hundreds gathered to say goodbye to Sebastiano Strangio, Marco Marmo and Francesco Giorgi, who at 17 years old was the youngest victim.
As is the custom, men waited outside the church while women attended the service, fanning themselves in the August heat.
"The life we live does not seem like 'life' any more," said Pino Strangio, the parish priest, quoted by ANSA news agency.
"Looking at your coffins, we discover how love has turned to hatred ... Tragedy is growing like an unstoppable cancer."
In the nearby village of Siderno, family and friends gave brothers Francesco and Marco Pergola, aged 22 and 20, a noisy send-off. As in San Luca, people clapped in a show of respect as the two coffins were rushed off to the cemetery.
Police decided the funerals could go ahead because the situation in San Luca and nearby villages "doesn't give particular cause for alarm". But the usual funeral processions to the church and graveyard were banned.
The sixth victim, whose 18th birthday all the victims were celebrating the night they were killed, will be buried on Friday in Germany, where he was born.
That ceremony will be closed to all but close family members, but police officers will be present, police said.
The men died in hail of bullets outside a pizzeria run by Calabrians in the town of Duisburg, northwest Germany, where the 'Ndrangheta is believed to be well established.
The Calabrian mafia is estimated by Italian experts to have an annual turnover of nearly 36 billion euros ($49 billion), putting it on a par with some of the largest publicly quoted companies in Italy.
Much of its cash comes from trafficking cocaine, a trade which the 'Ndrangheta now dominates in Europe. It has outgrown other Italian mafias like its more famous Sicilian counterpart, the Cosa Nostra, and the Neapolitan Camorra.
The feud is believed to have its roots in rancour over an egg-throwing incident during Carnival in 1991. Last Christmas, the wife of the head of the Nirta-Strangio clan, which is in deadly rivalry with the Pelle-Vottari clan, was killed.
Police believe the latest killings were a reprisal, and are now braced for further bloodshed. The attack in Germany has created panic there about Italian mob activities and raised awareness of the huge power of the Calabrian mafia.
Italian police have searched houses and set up roadblocks around San Luca. Secret services said in a recent report that the 'Ndrangheta was the most dangerous crime syndicate in Italy and one of the world's top drug-trafficking cartels.
The local bishop, Giancarlo Bregantini, sent a message to the unknown hitmen via reporters, saying: "God has seen you and will call you to account for the blood you have spilled."
- REUTERS
