Two sought over Germany Mafia killings

GERMANY: Investigators were yesterday trying to piece together the details surrounding the murder of six Italian men in an apparent…

GERMANY:Investigators were yesterday trying to piece together the details surrounding the murder of six Italian men in an apparent Mafia vendetta in the western German city of Duisburg.

A contingent of police from Calabria, the region in southern Italy where all the men came from, travelled to Germany to help with the case and try to establish the motive for the attack.

Border guards at airports and ports across the country were told to be on special alert for the two suspected killers, who executed the men with more than 70 gunshots early on Wednesday.

The pair were seen running from the scene by a witness, but police have no concrete description of them. Investigators said they were looking for "two men between the ages of 15 and 85".

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Footage from a nearby CCTV camera was being studied but was said to be disappointing. "Up to now the quality of the pictures has proven to be poor," said Reinhard Pape, a police spokesman. "But we're trying to extract something of value from them."

The relatives of the victims, all of whom either owned or were involved in running the Da Bruno restaurant in front of which they were gunned down, were under police protection yesterday.

Throughout the day members of Duisburg's 4,000-strong Italian community visited the scene and laid flowers next to police cordons.

The men were murdered at about 2.30am on Wednesday after celebrating the 18th birthday of Tommaso Venturi, an apprentice at Da Bruno who was also murdered.

They were all believed to be members of the Pelle-Romeo clan, part of the powerful 'Ndrangheta mafia mob which is native to Calabria. The clan has reportedly had a presence in Duisburg for two decades.

Police were working on the theory that the killers' main target was Marco Marmo (25), who was wanted by another 'Ndrangheta clan, the Nirtra-Strangios, in connection with the murder of the wife of clan boss Giovanni Nirta last Christmas.

Marmo is believed to have travelled from his home town of San Luca in Calabria to Germany at the weekend, possibly after a warning from police that his life was in danger.

Meanwhile, the extent of the 'Ndrangheta's reach in Germany was revealed yesterday as police said it had an estimated 160 members in the country and that the gang ran businesses in the Ruhr Valley, Erfurt and Leipzig.

It is believed to run 30 pizzerias in Berlin alone and to use Germany as a transit route for its extensive cocaine-smuggling network. It could not be ruled out that Da Bruno was a popular Mafia meeting point, they said.