Will Killings in Germany Spark Mafia-Style War?

ROME, Aug. 24, 2007— -- In the end, the parents had their way. They were granted permission to mourn their sons in public funerals and burials in their hometowns set in the rugged hills of Calabria in southern Italy.

In a surprise nighttime attack Aug. 15, police say six men, all descendents of families from the area around the town of San Luca in Calabria, were fatally shot in the head as they were leaving a birthday dinner in an Italian pizzeria in downtown Duisburg, Germany, police said.

For days, while they waited for their sons' bodies to return home from Germany, the families appealed to public officials to let them bury their loved ones in the traditional Catholic way. Their sons were innocent victims, they insisted; they did not want to to be forced to mourn them in private police-guarded funerals.

It would be "like killing them twice," the mother of one of the victims told reporters.

German investigators, now working with Italian police, believe two men fired 70 shots from two small machine guns before probably driving off with an accomplice.

The victims did not shoot back.

The six victims were between the ages of 16 and 38: Tommaso Venturi, who was celebrating his 18th birthday that night; Francesco Giorgi; brothers Francesco and Marco Pergola; Sebastiano Strangio; and Marco Marmo, who investigators believe was the target of the attack.

Security has been stepped up in the towns of San Luca and the surrounding area since the attack. Uniformed police have been standing guard on the streets as the funerals took place.

Officials would not concede to one request from the families, so processions accompanying the coffins to the church and cemetery were banned out of fear of mob violence.