Ciaculli Massacre

Ciaculli massacre
Location	Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo
Date	30 June 1963
Target	Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission
Attack type	Car bomb
Deaths	Seven police and military officers: Mario Malausa, Silvio Corrao, Calogero Vaccaro, Eugenio Altomare and Mario Farbelli from the Carabinieri, and Pasquale Nuccio and Giorgio Ciacci from the Army.
Perpetrators	Michele Cavataio, the Mafia boss of the Acquasanta quarter of Palermo

The Ciaculli massacre on 30 June 1963 was caused by a car bomb that exploded in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The bomb was intended for Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and the boss of the Ciaculli Mafia family. Mafia boss Pietro Torretta was considered to be the man behind the bomb attack.

The Ciaculli massacre was the culmination point of a bloody Mafia war between rival clans in Palermo in the early 1960s—now known as the First Mafia War, a second started in the early 1980s—for the control of the profitable opportunities brought about by rapid urban growth and the illicit heroin trade to North America. The ferocity of the struggle was unprecedented, reaping 68 victims from 1961 to 1963.

In the 1950s the Mafia had developed interests in urban property, land speculation, public sector construction, commercial transportation and the wholesale fruit, vegetable, meat and fish markets that served the burgeoning city of Palermo, whose population rose by 100,000 between 1951 and 1961.

A relationship developed between mafiosi and a new generation of politicians of the Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana) such as Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino. Lima was connected to Angelo La Barbera, Tommaso Buscetta and the leading construction entrepreneur Francesco Vassallo.

The period 1958-1964, when Lima was mayor of Palermo and Ciancimino was assessor for public works, was later referred to as the "Sack of Palermo". In five years, 4,000 building licences were signed, more than half in the names of three pensioners who had no connection with construction at all. The construction boom led to the destruction of the city's green belt, and distinctive villas were replaced by apartment blocks.

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