The Spanish resort of Marbella on Sunday declared three days of mourning after a 10-year-old boy and an Italian hairdresser were killed in the crossfire of what appeared to be an underworld assassination attempt.
The shootings bore the hallmarks of a Mafia-style hit, with three men drawing up in a car outside a hairdressing salon and peppering it with machine gun fire.
The target, said to be a French-Algerian underworld figure, was reported to have been inside the Cosmo hairdresser’s at the Hotel Andalucia Plaza in Marbella when the would-be assassins began shooting on Saturday evening.
He escaped with his life and was reported on Sunday to have disappeared.
But a 10-year-old Spanish boy on a holiday visit was killed, and the aunt he was with was wounded. The second victim was one of the hairdressers at the salon, a 36-year-Italian.
A Spaniard reported to be the bodyguard of the target was in a serious condition in hospital on Sunday after being hit by four bullets. He was in a car outside the hairdresser’s and reportedly shot back at the three men with a pistol.
The weapon was being studied by police on Sunday. Spanish media reported that more than 50 shots had been fired during the shootout, which also saw several other people injured by flying glass.
The shoot-out drew new attention to Marbella’s growing reputation as a haunt of international criminal gangs.
Police say gangs are attracted by Marbella’s shifting international population, along with its proximity to the drug-trafficking routes out of Morocco and the opportunities for laundering money in its booming and corrupt construction sector.
A man believed to be from eastern Europe, who was carrying false passports and identity cards, was shot in a Marbella cafeteria six weeks ago.
Police last year claimed to have broken up 53 criminal gangs operating in Marbella and on the Costa del Sol. – Guardian Unlimited Â