Are Children Latest Target of Italian Crime?

ROME, Nov 3, 2008— -- Violence in the crime-ridden outskirts of Naples moved to new heights Saturday when the local mob -- the Camorra -- took aim at children.

Four gunmen on motorcycles, their faces hidden by helmets, opened fire on a group of teenagers at a video arcade in the dilapidated neighborhood of Secondigliano, injuring five boys between the ages of 12 and 16 in the legs.

The reason for the attack is still unclear, although investigators believe it could be either a warning to the owner of the arcade -- a known drug dealer -- or a punitive raid on the boys for their role in a brawl earlier that evening. The 40 shots were apparently meant as an intimidation, since the gunmen aimed low, avoiding fatal shots.

Organized crime groups in Italy traditionally respect children, pregnant women and the elderly, and using children for a Camorra warning is "extremely serious," said Naples Mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino. "It breaks with one of the fundamental values of civil coexistence," she said.

Italian daily La Repubblica reports on the children, the latest target, of the Camorra.

"All I remember is the noise, the shots. And all my friends diving to the ground," recounts Vittorio from his hospital bed, 20 hours after the shooting in Secondigliano.

"And me too, although I am older and bigger than they are, I could have died in the middle of that tarantella, that shooting. I scrambled under the chairs in the arcade so I wouldn't die by mistake. Then again, it isn't the first time this has happened in our neighborhood."

Vittorio is 16 years old, and if it weren't for his round face, the frightened look in his eyes, and his lost innocence, he would look four years older.

"Luckily I only broke my foot. Who knows who they were, what the killers wanted. I don't have anything to do with them. I installed light fixtures, I had a job. Now I am out of work," he says with a forced smile and the doleful optimism of children who have grown up too fast.

Vittorio cried all night, but now, a day later, he is getting ready to listen to the Milan-Naples football game on his headphones. And he laughs: "If I had died, I would have missed this great game."