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Italian paramilitary police officers inspect a secret bunker in a house in San Luca
Italian paramilitary police officers inspect a secret bunker in a house in San Luca. Photograph: Antonino Condorelli/Reuters
Italian paramilitary police officers inspect a secret bunker in a house in San Luca. Photograph: Antonino Condorelli/Reuters

Mafia suspects held in Italian police swoop

This article is more than 16 years old

Hundreds of officers swooped on a small town in southern Italy today and arrested more than 30 suspected mafiosi after the execution-style killings of six men in Germany earlier this month, police said.

The massive operation saw camouflage-clad officers, backed by helicopters, descend on San Luca, the power base of the Calabrian underworld organisation, the 'Ndrangheta.

A total of 32 suspects were in custody, Renato Cortese, a police official in the regional capital of Reggio, said.

The operation came after six men, aged 16 to 38, were shot dead on August 15 outside a pizzeria run by Calabrians in Duisburg, north-west Germany, where the 'Ndrangheta is believed to be well established.

"It's still too soon to say if those directly involved in the [Duisburg] massacre are among them," a police spokesman said.

The slayings in Germany were blamed on a decades-old feud between two rival clans.

"It is a vast operation that came in response of this terrible war involving the two families in San Luca," Mr Cortese said.

Police had issued 40 arrest warrants after a long-standing investigation that started before the German killings, officials said in a statement.

German and Italian authorities were conducting a separate investigation to find the Duisburg killers, the statement said.

The Ansa news agency said charges against those arrested variously included mafia association, murder and arms trafficking.

Among those being sought by police were the brothers of two of the victims in Germany, as well as top bosses of both clans, the police said.

The Reuters news agency reported that those arrested included the brothers, who they named as Achille Marmo and Giovanni Strangio. It also said Giovanni Nirta, the suspected head of a mob clan, was another of those arrested.

While most suspects were arrested in San Luca, including three found hiding in an underground bunker, some were being sought in Rome and a nearby town.

The Calabrian mafia is estimated by Italian experts to have an annual turnover of nearly €36bn (£24.4bn), putting it on a par with some of the largest publicly quoted companies in Italy.

The 'Ndrangheta has outgrown other Italian mafias, such as its more famous Sicilian counterpart, the Cosa Nostra, thanks to its control of Europe's lucrative cocaine market.

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