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With his plaintive doe eyes staring directly into the camera, little Domenico Petruzelli radiates childhood innocence. The blue-eyed three-year-old didn’t know his mum Carla Fornari and her partner Cosimo Orlando were mixed up in the Mafia.

But that made no difference last month when hitmen forced the family car off the road and opened fire with machine guns.

Domenico died instantly, his limp, bloodied body riddled with bullet wounds. His mum and her boyfriend, a mob figure convicted of two murders, also died.

The murder was a shock even in a region of Italy where tit-for-tat revenge killings between mobsters have reached epidemic levels. It was a grim reminder of how far the reality of the modern Mafia differs from the “code of honour” myth popularised in The Godfather and other movies. If there was ever a time when women, children and bystanders were safe, it was long ago.

Domenico is the latest of 80 children killed in Mafia hits. More than 800 adults who had no involvement in the feuds have also been murdered, all just “collateral damage” in a violent war for mob supremacy in crime-ridden cities like Naples.

Just days after Domenico’s death in the southern city of Taranto, the Pope warned Mafia killers they would end up in hell.

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Pope Francis said: “This life that you live now won’t give you pleasure. It won’t give you joy or happiness. Blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can’t bring it with you to your next life. Repent. There’s still time to not end up in hell, which is what awaits you if you continue on this path.”

The Pontiff made his appeal at a ceremony in Rome surrounded by 700 family members of innocents killed by the Mafia. The names of all 842 victims were read out by members of Libera, a group that campaigns to halt the killings. It’s an annual event and every year the list grows longer.

As police try to find little Domenico’s killers, his two older brothers, Davide, six, and Mauro, seven, are under 24-hour protection. They were unharmed, probably because they were in the back seat and Domenico was in the front. But they are also the only witnesses to the crime.

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Police believe the killers were from Sacra Corona Unita, a branch of the mob based in Puglia, the south-eastern “heel” of Italy. The gang’s business is drug trafficking, gun running and human trafficking.

The target may have been the boy’s mother Carla, a mob widow who testified against her husband’s assassins in 2011 while pregnant with Domenico.

Her father Romualdo Fornari, said: “My daughter was a brave woman. She gave evidence in court confirming her husband had an appointment with his killers that night. Everyone in the village knew it, but only she had the courage to say it, even as the killers shot her looks that promised much more than mere threats.”

In January another three-year-old, Nicola Campolongo, known as Coco, was shot in the head at point-blank range. His charred remains were found in a burnt-out car on a farm alongside the corpses of his grandfather Salvatore Lannicelli and a woman.

A 50 cent coin on the roof was a Mafia message that the slaughter in Cosenza, south of Naples, was over a debt.

The grandfather was looking after Coco because both his parents were behind bars, arrested during a crackdown on drug ­trafficking. Prosecutor Franco Giacomantonio said: “Every line has now been crossed. How can anyone kill a three-year-old boy in this way?”

The feared Ndrangheta mafia of Calabria is thought to be to blame. It has global connections and handles 80% of Europe’s cocaine imports. Another shocking case was the savage kidnapping and murder of 11-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo, son of a Sicilian mafia boss who gave evidence against fellow mobsters. Young Giuseppe was tortured, strangled then dissolved in an acid bath by Giovanni Brusca, a sick thug nicknamed The Pig.

Schoolboy Claudio Domino, 11, meanwhile, was shot in the forehead because he “saw something he shouldn’t have” in Palermo, Sicily. It was such an act of savagery that even the mob bosses distanced themselves, worried about losing local support.

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When gunman opened fire at a football match in June 2009 in the Calabrian town of Crotone, targeting a rival, nine others were hit. They included 11-year-old Domenico Grabiele, known as Dodo. She was shot in the head and died three months later.

Valentina Terracciano, just two, was killed in 2000, in gun crossfire which raked a flower shop in Pollena Trocchia, near Naples. The store belonged to her uncle, the real target.

Annalisa Durante, 14, was a bystander used as a human shield in a clash between two rival Naples clans in 2004. She was shot in the back of the head and died days later. She had written in her diary: “I want to escape to Naples. I’m scared.” Her death inspired journalist Roberto Saviano to write his book Gomorrah about the Neapolitan mafia, later made into an award-winning film.

Describing her friends at the funeral, he wrote: “Many of these girls will soon marry Camorristi. Many will bear children who will be killed. But for now they are just little girls in black. They weep for a friend.

“As her body is being carried away in its white coffin, a classmate calls her on her cellphone. The ringing in the coffin is the new requiem. No one answers.”

Another Camorra feud claimed the life of two-year-old Nuncio Pancali, shot in his mobster father’s arms in Naples.

The Camorra is also blamed for an epidemic of child cancer deaths after they illegally dumped thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals near homes. The nearby town of Acerra has 12 times the national average of brain tumours in youngsters. It should be no surprise that these hardened thugs care little if they take out tiny tots as well as their targets. A recent study calculated that the combined turnover of Italy’s Mafia groups total £166billion. That’s more than the European Union’s annual spending.

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Giovanni Brauzzi, security policy director at Italy’s foreign ministry, said: “They invest only 10% of this budget in Italy. The rest they invest elsewhere. They have good friends everywhere.”

Mafia bosses exert an influence that goes to the top of the political ranks.

The Forza Italia party, led by disgraced ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi, is accused of trying to block a law aimed at stopping the mob selling votes to corrupt politicians. Such power means the clans will eliminate all witnesses to crime – including young children.

Those who know the Mafia best are not shocked by the spate of child deaths. They say the romantic view that the mob didn’t hurt “civilians” was always a myth.

Writer Attilio Bolzoni said: “There was never a ‘good’ Mafia. When they kill they don’t care who it is.”

In the wake of young Domenico’s murder last month, politician Rosy Bindi, leader of Italy’s Democratic Party, could only sadly agree.

“The Mafia know no morals,” she said. “They have always killed, even women and children.”