GettyImages-913713046
The black car Alfa Romeo of young man suspected of wounding several foreign nationals in a drive-by shooting, is blocked by police and Carabibieri enforcement at Macerata, on February 3, 2018. Italian police said they have arrested a man suspected of opening fire on foreigners from a vehicle in central Italy on February 3, 2018. Media reported six people were injured, four of them seriously, in the incident in the town of Macerata. Giuseppe Bellini/AFP/GETTY

Italian police on Saturday arrested a man accused of what is believed to be a racially motivated shooting that left six African migrants injured in the central city of Macerata.

The people targeted in the Saturday shootings were all black and the suspect in the shooting, Luca Traini, 28, was white. Traini, who had an Italian flag wrapped around his neck when he was detained, has run in local elections as a candidate of the right-wing League party, according to the center-left Democratic party, which is currently in power.

One of the victims faces life-threatening injuries, according to the Associated Press.

In a Saturday night news conference, Interior Minister Marco Minniti called the shooting an “evident display of racial hatred.”

Police allege that Traini, over the course of around two hours, shot bystanders while driving an Alfa Romeo car through the streets of Macerata, a town of 43,000, around 146 miles northeast of Rome.

The shooting may be related to a violent murder that occurred days ago.

A Nigerian man was charged Thursday with the brutal killing of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro, who was found chopped up and placed in two different suitcases near Macerata. The killings stoked racial tension amid an election season where immigration is a lightning rod issue. The suspect in the murder, Innocent Oseghale, was denied asylum in Italy, but remained in the country, according to the Guardian.

Minniti said he believed the shooting may have been an act of revenge.

“[This] strongly recalls a raid of retaliation — a random, armed retaliation,” said Minniti.

The town’s mayor, Romano Carancini, echoed the sentiment.

“They were all of color. This is … a grave fact. As was grave what happened to Pamela. The closeness of the two events makes you imagine there could be a connection.”

Matteo Salvini, the head of League, has campaigned on deportation of migrants and has used Mastropietro’s slaying in campaign rhetoric ahead of the March 4 national elections. Salvini distanced himself from Saturday's shooting, but has continued his hardline immigration stance.

"Whoever shoots is a delinquent, no matter the skin color. It is clear that out of control immigration ... brings social conflict," Salvini told reporters after the shooting.

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