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.

More than a dozen mob suspects were arrested today in an area where Italians were recently involved in violent clashes with immigrant workers, police said today.

A MAN armed with a box cutter barricaded himself inside a day-care centre in southern Italy yesterday with 11 children and a teacher, but police captured him hours later and all the hostages were released unhurt.

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 reputed boss of the Italian Mafia Bernardo Provenzano maintained his prison silence today as forensic experts searched his hideout and police arrested three men accused of aiding Italy’s No.1 fugitive.