Paolo Nirta captured responsible for the murder of six Italian men ?

Paolo Nirta, 31, was caught in a joint police-military operation as he tried to escape by vaulting over the balcony of his house into the lane below at the rural hilltown of San Luca in the Aspromonte mountains of Calabria, after officers had smashed their way through the front door. A hundred police and troops with helicopters were used in the operation. Nirta was unarmed. San Luca is a stronghold of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, which together with the Camorra, the Naples Mafia, is now considered by the Italian authorities to be more dangerous and powerful than the Sicilian Mafia, known as the Cosa Nostra.
The six men shot dead at Duisburg last year were members of the Pelle-Vottari clan, the rivals of the Nirta-Strangio clan. The origins of the feud are obscure but are said to lie in an incident at the San Luca carnival in 1991 in which eggs were thrown as an insult. Italian authorities captured Paolo Nirta, 31, whom they accuse of being the acting boss of a mob clan they hold responsible for the murder of six Italian men in Duisburg, Germany, last year. Nirta was arrested today in his hometown of San Luca, in the region of Calabria, and is accused of being a member of the mafia, according to Carabinieri police Lieutenant Colonel Francesco Iacono. Nirta is the brother-in-law of Giovanni Strangio, 29, who authorities are seeking as a shooter in the German slayings. Nirta is a leading member of the Nirta-Strangio clan, a mafia family, or 'ndrina, active in Calabria and in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, police said. The Nirta-Strangio clan has been locked in a murderous feud with the Vottari-Pelle- Romeo clan for 17 years. Nirta ``is considered the acting boss of a powerful clan involved in a feud that has bloodied San Luca, and which is implicated in the massacre in Duisburg, Germany,'' said Marco Minniti, a former undersecretary for the Interior Ministry and a leading spokeman for the opposition on criminal issues, in an e- mailed statement. San Luca, with 4,400 inhabitants, is the center of the dispute, which broke out on Feb. 14, 1991, after two people were killed during carnival celebrations. A six-year peace was broken on Christmas Day, 2006, with the murder of a clan chief's wife, Maria Strangio, who is a relative by marriage of Giovanni Strangio. To avenge Maria Strangio's murder, the Nirta-Strangio clan targeted six men, aged 16 to 38, and riddled them with bullets on Aug. 15 of last year. The men were in a Duisburg parking lot after a birthday party for one of the victims which had been held in the nearby Da Bruno pizzeria. The two feuding clans are part of Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia, which has overtaken Sicily's Cosa Nostra as the most dangerous Italian organized crime group, according to the Italian Interior Ministry and the U.S. Justice Department. Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip said in May that the 'Ndrangheta ``is a serious problem and it has a vast reach,'' with members active in South America, the Northeast part of the U.S., in Australia and throughout Europe.