Fraga Tudor is lucky to be alive. She had just come out of a café beneath the frescoed, 16th-century archway of Porta San Gennaro, near Naples Cathedral, when a Mafia hitman on a motor scooter pumped bullets into Vincenzo Prestigiacomo, a small-time mafioso who was climbing the ancient stone steps outside.

Signora Tudor, 32, was hit in the leg and fell to the ground. “Thank God I did not have my children with me,” she said.

By yesterday, as Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister, met local leaders in Naples to discuss how to tackle the apparently unstoppable wave of mob killings, rain had washed away most of the blood on the steps.

The violence, which has claimed a life a day over the past week, has led government ministers to talk of bringing in the Army to restore order. Yesterday Signor Prodi said that the deployment of troops was “not excluded”, but for the time being the solution lay in supplying 1,300 extra police and in “relaunching the economy in the South”.

For Salvatore Arena, who runs a toy shop at Porta San Gennaro, neither course seems likely to provide the answer. Signor Arena heard the shots that killed Prestigiacomo, 31, and took Signora Tudor to a nearby hospital. “Rivalry between Mafia clans used to be confined largely to the suburbs,” he said. “Now it has invaded the historic centre. It’s out of control.”

His friends and neighbours blame the fear of random violence that has invaded daily life in the area, known as La Sanita, on a vicious battle between younger members of the Mafia clans for the lucrative illegal drugs market, which Naples police estimate is worth €52 million (£35 million) a year.

The Camorra, the Naples Mafia, also makes handsome proft from pizzo, or protection money. Shopkeepers are reluctant to give details, but I was told that shops could expect to pay up to €1,000 a month and supermarkets and small businesses up to €3,000 to local mafiosi collecting “for charity”.

Police in Naples say that the violence has spiralled out of control, paradoxically, because of their success in putting traditional Camorra bosses behind bars.

The Mafia power structure that once held communities in sway has disintegrated, with trigger-happy younger mafiosi feuding for control of individual clans and the cocaine and heroin trade. There have been 75 murders this year, 12 in the past ten days.

Most of the murders still take place in the desolate suburbs. Yesterday police cars patrolled the Via Appia in the northeastern suburb of Sant’ Antimo, where this week Rodolfo Pacilio, 36, who sold gaming machines to Naples bars, was shot in the back by two helmeted killers on a motorbike.

The lock-up garage from which he operated, sandwiched between a shoe warehouse and a mozzarella wholesaler, is sealed. Nobody in the bar next door admits to having heard the shots, or knowing anything about the victim.

Some residents complain that the Naples police force of 13,000 contains corrupt officers who turn a blind eye to the Camorra. Giorgio Bocca, the veteran journalist and author of a recent study of Naples, said that there was “widespread complicity” with organised crime.

Others blame the controversial prison amnesty this summer, in which 2,713 prisoners were let out of jails in Naples alone. A number reoffended or became the victims of vendettas by rival criminals.

Yesterday Signor Prodi insisted, however, that the amnesty had been necessary to relieve prison overcrowding.

Rosa Russo Jervolino, the centre-left Mayor, said the long-term answer lay in “massive economic investment” in an area with nearly 25 per cent unemployment. “We feel abandoned by Rome,” she complained to Signor Prodi.

Giovandomenico Lepore, the Naples chief prosecutor, agreed. He said that he told the Prime Minister that sending troops “would only damage the image of a city as a tourist destination”.

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