ROME, August 12, 2008 (AFP) - A suspected supplier of weapons to a southern Italian mafia clan that lost six members in the August 2007 'Duisburg massacre' was arrested near Rome on Tuesday, Italian police said.

'Gianfranco Antonioli, wanted since last year, was arrested in Aprilia,' south of Rome, police official Renato Cortese told AFP by telephone.

'He is accused of bringing heavy weapons and machine guns into Italy for the Pelle-Vottari mafia clan in Calabria.'

Six members of the clan, involved in a longstanding vendetta with the Nirta-Strangio mafia family, were gunned down outside a pizza restaurant in the western German industrial town of Duisburg on August 15, 2007.

Antonioli was allegedly linked to one of the victims and to Bosnian gun runner Elvire Marmarac, who remains at large.

The feud between the two 'Ndrangheta mafia clans from San Luca, Calabria, dates back to 1991 and has left more than a dozen dead.

After the murder of Maria Strangio in late 2006, out of fear of reprisals, 'the Pelle-Vottari clan threw itself into a frenzied search for heavy weapons and wound up tapping Marmarac for supplies,' the police spokesman said.

Several dozen people have been arrested in Italy in connection with the feud, but the chief suspect in the Duisburg killings, Giovanni Strangio, 28, remains at large.