Italian police make arrests linked to 2007 mob shooting

Italian police arrested seven people Friday in an investigation connected to a mob shooting in Germany that claimed the lives of six people last year, officials said.

The suspects were not directly connected with the Aug. 15, 2007, shooting in Duisburg, said Francesco Iacono of the Italian police. But they belong to the feuding clans that were believed to be behind the shooting, he said.

The clans are part of the ´ndrangheta organized crime syndicate, which is based in the southern Italian region of Calabria and is now considered by many analysts to be more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia.

Iacono said some of the suspects were picked up in Calabria, while others were arrested in cities as far away as Udine and Bologna in northern Italy. Two more suspects remain at large, he said.

Among those arrested are the wife and sister of a ´ndrangheta boss who is already behind bars, said Iacono, who is based in the Calabrian town of Locri.

German authorities had no immediate information about the arrests, Duisburg police spokesman Reinhard Pape said Friday.

The slayings of the six Italians at a restaurant in downtown Duisburg _ seen as the latest bloody chapter in the feud _ drew attention to the ´ndrangheta. Investigators say the ´ndrangheta has eclipsed the Sicilian Mafia largely because of its control of Europe´s lucrative cocaine market.