Mafia gunmen shoot dead Italian politician

ROME - Masked gunmen have shot dead an Italian politician of the centre left in the southern Calabria region.

The gunmen stalked Calabria's vice president, Francesco Fortugno, to a voting booth where he cast his vote in a ballot to choose who will lead the centre left in next year's general election.

The gunmen shot him five times as he left the voting booth.

"It is a crime in the typical style of the mafia, against a person of good repute," said Nicola Adamo, the secretary general of the Democrats of the Left in Calabria.

"The mafia have raised the bar, striking a high-level politician in a symbolic moment, on the day of the primaries. We are stunned," Italian news agency ANSA quoted Adamo as saying.

Fortugno, 54, who was married with two children, was a doctor and leading member of the centre-left Daisy party.

Organised crime in Calabria is run by the local 'Ndrangheta mafia group, a rival to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Italy's interior minister said in June the 'Ndrangheta had become the most dangerous mafia group in southern Italy.

- REUTERS