ROME - A SUSPECTED Italian mobster accused of the killing of six men outside a pizzeria in Germany in 2007 has been caught by Dutch police, ending more than a year on the run as one of Italy's most wanted fugitives, police said.

Giovanni Strangio, 30, is considered a main suspect in the so-called 'Duisburg massacre", in which six Italians were gunned down in a hail of bullets in Duisburg, Germany.

The killings were believed to be part of a long-running feud between rival clans of the 'Ndrangheta crime group and revenge for the 2006 Christmas Day killing of Strangio's distant cousin.

Late on Thursday Dutch police stormed an Amsterdam apartment where Strangio had been secretly living with his wife and son.

They found at least 1 million euros (S$1.9 million) in cash.

'There were a lot of apparently forged papers and passports ... and lots of money, probably over a million euros, and a firearm,' Holger Haufmann, the head of Duisburg's criminal investigation unit, told reporters.

The mafia in the southern Italian region of Calabria, known as the 'Ndrangheta, has grown into the most powerful Italian crime organisation - bigger than Sicily's Cosa Nostra - with most of its cash coming from drug trafficking.

Renato Cortese, a police chief in Calabria, said authorities found Strangio partly thanks to wiretaps and telephone tracking that gave away his location. -- REUTERS