Thousands of Italian police took part in a huge operation against a powerful crime syndicate today, arresting 300 people including top bosses and seizing millions in property.

Some 300 people were arrested today as Italian police carried out a major crackdown on a powerful crime gang in a pre-dawn swoop, news reports said.

A VETERAN mobster was arrested after 17 years on the run, but a sympathetic crowd cheered him yesterday as he was escorted out of a police barracks and taken to jail.

A huge police operation wrecked plans by the Sicilian Mafia to reform its once all-powerful leadership today.

Italian police today arrested a wanted gang leader believed to be part of an organised crime clan involved in the massacre of six people in Germany last summer.

Italian and German police arrested four suspected members of organised crime clans today believed to be involved in the killing of six Italians in Germany.

THE arrest of supremo Salvatore Lo Piccolo completed the “decapitation” of the Sicilian Mafia, prosecutor Pietro Grasso said this week.

Hundreds of police raided a small town in southern Italy today, burrowing through a secret tunnel and searching homes as they arrested more than 30 suspected members of organised crime clans believed to be involved in a feud that claimed the lives of six Italians in Germany earlier this month.

The bodies of three of the six victims of last week’s Mafia killings in Germany have arrived in Italy, as authorities debated how to handle security at the funerals amid fears of new mob violence.

Italy was commemorating the victims of mob-related violence today, remembering hundreds of policemen, magistrates and citizens killed by the Mafia.

Italian police have captured a mob boss who had been on the run for about a decade and was on the country’s list of 30 most wanted fugitives.

Authorities in Sicily said today they had arrested 46 people suspected of providing logistical support to top Mafia fugitive Bernardo Provenzano.

Gaetano Badalamenti, once known as the “boss of bosses” of the Sicilian Mafia, has died at the age of 80 in the US, where he was serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking.

Gaetano Badalamenti, once described by US authorities as the “boss of all bosses” of the Sicilian Mafia, has died, a Justice Department spokesman said.

Murder charges are expected to be brought against a group suspected of the Mafia killing of “God’s banker” Roberto Calvi, a lawyer said today .