Police arrest 100 as war is declared on Naples Mafia

Italian police yesterday struck what they claimed was a historic blow against the Neapolitan Mafia. In a series of raids, they arrested more than 100 suspected gangsters, confiscated gang property valued at more than €100m (£80m), and seized three high-ranking Mobsters believed to have been closely involved in the murders of seven people in a seaside resort north of Naples nearly two weeks ago.

The massacre on 18 September, allegedly by the Casalesi, the most feared and violent clan of the Camorra, as the Naples Mafia is known, was the most shocking in Italy for several years. The killers struck twice in the town of Castelvolturno, once at a games arcade, killing an Italian, and then at an African-run boutique and tailoring shop, where six Africans from Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso were shot dead.

Police claimed that the immigrants were petty drug dealers who had been punished for failing to pay pizzo, or protection money, to the Casalesi. But it emerged that those killed had no involvement in the drugs trade.

In recent years Caserta, the province on the northern outskirts of Naples which includes Castelvolturno, has become the most lawless in the country. Thugs have infiltrated themselves in local government and businesses, from public construction contracts to the service sector.

Fear that Caserta was slipping out of the control prompted the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, to declare "war" on the Camorra last week. "The state exists," he told the press, as he reported yesterday's successes. "It intervenes in an effective way and it is regaining control of this territory."