The Camorra, the Naples organized crime machine, has declared "war on the state," Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told the Italian Senate Sept. 24, one day after the government authorized sending 500 soldiers to the Campania region in response to the shooting deaths last week of seven people, six of them African immigrants, in a suspected feud over drug turf in Caserta, north of Naples. Maroni called the killings of the Italian national and the immigrants from Ghana, Liberia and Togo an "act of terrorism." The last time soldiers were used to combat organized crime was in 1992, after Sicilian mobsters assassinated two top judges. Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said the soldiers were needed to cope with a "criminal emergency." (BBC, Sept. 25; LAT, NYT, Sept. 24)

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