Seven killed in Mafia shootings in southern Italy (2nd Roundup)

Sep 19, 2008, 13:21 GMT

Rome - African immigrants on Friday took to the streets of the southern Italian town of Castel Volturno to protest the murder of six fellow-Africans in a suspected mafia shooting.

The group smashed several shop windows and scuffled with police, near to where the deadly machine-gun attack took place on Thursday night in the town, situated north-west of Naples.

Some of the protestors held up placards proclaiming: 'We are not drug dealers' - a reference to reports that the Africans - believed to be immigrants from Ghana, Liberia and Togo - were killed as part a of drugs turf war.

Police suspect hit-men of the Casalesi crime families belonging to the Camorra - the Neapolitan version of the mafia - carried out the attack and another one just 20 minutes earlier in which the Italian owner of a slot-machine casino was killed in nearby Baia Verde.

Following consultations with Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, Italy's police chief Antonio Manganelli dispatched a pool of specialist anti-organized crime investigators to help probe the killings.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has made fighting crime a pillar of his conservative government's programme with troops deployed to assist police maintain security in Italian cities.

But critics say such measures - including the introduction by the government of harsher penalties for law-breaking immigrants - target petty crime and not the larger scale mafia activities.