ROME (TIP): An Italian woman who discovered her husband was cheating bit off his mistress’s finger in a street brawl which the Naples police described as fairly routine, albeit unusually violent.

The revenge attack came when the wife of a businessman in the southern Italian city found out her husband was having an affair with one of her relatives.

When the women bumped into each other while shopping in the crime-heavy Spanish Quarter of Naples, a scrap broke out in the narrow streets, despite efforts from passers-by to separate them. As the mistress pointed her finger at her rival, the wife jumped on her and bit it, severing the digit, which fell to the ground. The injured woman was taken to hospital to have her finger re-attached but doctors were unable to save it, a police spokesman said.

“We are used to seeing street scenes like this with women fighting each other for reasons of passion, but never with such violence,” he added. The Spanish Quarter is one of the heartlands of the notorious Camorra, a powerful mafia syndicate, which was exposed in journalist Roberto Saviano’s award-winning novel “Gomorrah” and the acclaimed 2008 film based on it.