REGGIO CALABRIA, Italy, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- An Italian mob boss serving a 13-year jail sentence escaped from southern Italian hospital where he was being treated, officials said.
Antonio Pelle, a member of the violent 'Ndrangheta organization founded in the province of Calabria, Italy, walked out of the hospital where he had been a patient for five days and no police had been stationed there to guard him, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Thursday.
ANSA did not say why Pelle was hospitalized.
The center-left opposition demanded an explanation for "why such a dangerous mobster was left unguarded."
ANSA said Pelle, 48, is a member of a faction involved in a feud that caused as many as 20 deaths last year.
He was arrested in October 2008 and sentenced to 13 years in jail for organized crime.
In the past three years, Italian authorities have arrested scores of 'Ndrangheta members and increased seizures of its assets.
'Ndrangheta, separate from Sicily's Mafia, has expanded from its Calabria home, now operating worldwide.
