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Rome will send hundreds of soldiers to the Naples region for three months to help police fight the local Camorra mafia, blamed for an attack that left an Italian and six Africans dead, the government said Tuesday.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the soldiers would be deployed "to areas that we think will need better security because of the rise in crime" following last Thursday's shootings in and near Castel Volturno, close to Naples.
The cabinet approved the addition of 500 soldiers to some 3,000 already deployed in troubled Italian cities to boost security, and most will be sent to the Naples region, Maroni said.
The Italian owner of a local recreation hall, three Ghanaians, two Liberians and a Togolese were killed in last week's shootings.
About 400 police reinforcements arrived in the area on Monday, which also saw the first arrest in the case.
The scale of the carnage was nearly without precedent even in a region in the grips of the notorious Camorra mafia.
The Casalesi clan, considered the Camorra's most dangerous and powerful, controls drug trafficking and prostitution in the Caserta area where most of the soldiers will be sent.
The brutal show of force may have been a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking, but investigators have made no official comment.
The centre-left opposition scorned the government plan as too little, too late.
"This measure is inadequate because it is too brief," Senator Giuseppe Lumia, vice-chairman of the parliamentary anti-mafia committee, told AFP. "To do things properly the army should stay at least three years."
The conservative government, which won April elections after campaigning on security issues, did not make its "belated decision until after a terrible massacre," opposition lawmaker Marina Sereni told reporters.
Accusing the government of issuing mere "sound bites on security," Sereni, the deputy leader of the Democratic Party's parliamentary group, slammed proposed budget cuts affecting security forces.
The government is "abandoning whole sections of our country to organised crime," she charged.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the soldiers would be deployed "to areas that we think will need better security because of the rise in crime" following last Thursday's shootings in and near Castel Volturno, close to Naples.
The cabinet approved the addition of 500 soldiers to some 3,000 already deployed in troubled Italian cities to boost security, and most will be sent to the Naples region, Maroni said.
The Italian owner of a local recreation hall, three Ghanaians, two Liberians and a Togolese were killed in last week's shootings.
About 400 police reinforcements arrived in the area on Monday, which also saw the first arrest in the case.
The scale of the carnage was nearly without precedent even in a region in the grips of the notorious Camorra mafia.
The Casalesi clan, considered the Camorra's most dangerous and powerful, controls drug trafficking and prostitution in the Caserta area where most of the soldiers will be sent.
The brutal show of force may have been a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking, but investigators have made no official comment.
The centre-left opposition scorned the government plan as too little, too late.
"This measure is inadequate because it is too brief," Senator Giuseppe Lumia, vice-chairman of the parliamentary anti-mafia committee, told AFP. "To do things properly the army should stay at least three years."
The conservative government, which won April elections after campaigning on security issues, did not make its "belated decision until after a terrible massacre," opposition lawmaker Marina Sereni told reporters.
Accusing the government of issuing mere "sound bites on security," Sereni, the deputy leader of the Democratic Party's parliamentary group, slammed proposed budget cuts affecting security forces.
The government is "abandoning whole sections of our country to organised crime," she charged.