Europe's top rights court on Thursday ruled that Italy had failed to protect nearly three million people living in a region blighted by toxic waste dumped by the mafia, and gave the government two years to fix the situation.

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Italy was aware of the illegal dumping, burying and burning of hazardous waste by the mafia in the Campania countryside north of Naples but failed to act.

Italy's top health authority in 2021 confirmed the link between high cancer rates and pollution in the area, known as the "Land of Fires" -- and home to Antonietta Moccia, one of the 41 people who brought the case.

Moccia's daughter Miriam was diagnosed with a brain tumour aged five, a medulloblastoma that occurs in around 1.5 people in a million in Europe.

"In the hospital there were three other cases from Acerra," their Campania town of 60,000, Moccia told AFP ahead of the verdict.

"We are invisible, nobody listens to us," she said.

Miriam, now 18, suffered serious after-effects but the cancer is "under control" and she "is moving forward and wants to turn the page", her mother........

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