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MILAN - An egg thrown at a carnival led to Wednesday's slaughter of six young men in a Mafia execution in Germany.
The bullet-riddled bodies of five Italian men were discovered shot execution-style in cars parked near the main station of the northwestern town of Duisburg. A sixth victim died on the way to hospital, in what police believe was a classic Mafia hit - the result of a vendetta between two mob families who both come from the Italian city of San Luca.
The Strangio-Nirta crime family have been at war with a rival underworld dynasty for 16 years - ever since a member of the first family threw an egg at a member of the Pelle-Romeo clan in the carnival at San Luca in 1991.
Fifteen people have been killed since then, five in the past eight months, with eight more seriously hurt.
Both clans belong to the Calabrian Mafia, known as the N'drangheta, and are based in the city of Reggio Calabria. Hundreds of Calabrian gangsters from San Luca live in Duisburg, carrying on drug trafficking under the cover of legitimate occupations.
It is claimed that they have bought up many of the city's best hotels and restaurants and use them to recycle the profits of the drug trade.
"There is a very strong Calabrian presence in Germany," said Luigi de Sena, former prefect of Reggio Calabria, "but until now it has kept a low profile in order not to attract attention."
After the egg-throwing incident, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, "the vendetta of San Luca was born".
According to police in Italy, the Pelle-Romeo family were the first to take revenge, shooting dead Francesco Strangio, 20, and Domenico Nirta, 19, and leaving two others seriously injured.
The next nine years saw a series of tit-for-tat killings by both clans until a truce was called in 2000. It held until Christmas Day 2006 when Maria Strangio, 33-year-old wife of Godfather Giovanni Nirta, was shot dead on her doorstep and her 5-year-old nephew was injured by a stray bullet.
The Duisburg victims were aged between 16 and 39 and were all unarmed. On Wednesday morning weeping friends and relatives of the men were seen being comforted by the police at the scene. One cried out "Sebastiano! Sebastiano!" as she was led weeping into a green and white police van. This was for Sebastiano Strangio, 39, the eldest member of the group to die.
Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said: "This is the coda of a feud between families, the author of which was one of those killed. It appears that he was worried because he seems to have been looking for weapons to defend himself. Prosecutors had already identified him as the man responsible for the St Luca attack, but the killers got to him first.
"Now we must be very careful to avoid a third act of the tragedy."
The national anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grassi said this gang massacre outside Italy was "completely unprecedented".
Italian news reports said the group had been celebrating the forthcoming 18th birthday of one of the victims, Tomasso Venturi. They had enjoyed a party at the Da Bruno pizzeria, near to the massacre scene and owned by Giuseppe Strangio, who was also gunned down.
The others were Francesco and Marco Pergola, aged 20 and 22, and Marco Marmo, 25. The other victim, aged 16, was not identified. Police said that Marmo and Strangio were known to police as Mafia members with convictions for drugs and arms.
Herrman-Josef Helmich, a police spokesman, said there were "no clues" so far as to the killers' identities. He confirmed all the victims were in two vehicles and had been shot at close quarters to the head.
Some 70 shots were fired in all, judging from the spent bullet cases found at the scene. Video footage filmed by CCTV cameras on nearby buildings was seized by police and is being examined for clues.
Helmich said there was "clearly" more than one assassin involved.
The bodies were discovered shortly after 2.30 on Wednesday morning after a cleaning lady on her way to work heard shots.
She flagged down a police car that went to the scene and found the bodies in the cars. Heavy rain in the area has hampered police efforts to recover evidence.
Duisburg has a high number of immigrants, many of them Italian: in one district of the city, Wedau, they account for 10 per cent of the population.
The Italian Mafia has been operating at an increased level in Germany in recent years. This year a leaked classified intelligence report by the BND - Germany's MI5 - said two of the major clans of organised crime in Italy now have a "massive presence" in Germany.
The study said that in addition to drug-running, the N'drangheta have also invested millions of its profits in German hotels, restaurants and houses, especially along the Baltic coast and in eastern German states of Thuringia and Saxony.
But it is also involved in more traditional mob rackets, including money laundering and drug running.
According to the BND report leaked to a Berlin newspaper, the N'drangheta "act in close co-operation with Albanian Mafia groups in moving weapons and narcotics across Europe's porous borders".
As part of its money-laundering activities, the Mafia has bought up large packages of shares in companies listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange, particularly energy firms.
Some clans have invested big in shares in Gazprom, of which German gas market leader E.ON owns 6 per cent.
- Independent
