Giorgia Meloni hails the "extraordinary" police operation in Palermo.

Italian police on Tuesday arrested 183 suspected mafia members, including several bosses, as part of a major crackdown on Sicily's Cosa Nostra in Palermo.

More than 1,200 officers were involved in the dawn raid which came after police cracked the encrypted mobile phone system which jailed mafia bosses used for communicating from prison.

Those arrested are accused of crimes including mafia-type criminal association, attempted murder, extortion, drug trafficking, illegal gambling and gun offences.

Un’operazione straordinaria dei Carabinieri del Comando Provinciale di Palermo ha portato oggi all’arresto di oltre 180 persone, tra cui diversi boss, infliggendo un colpo durissimo a Cosa Nostra. Un risultato che conferma l’impegno incessante dello Stato nella lotta alla…— Giorgia Meloni (@GiorgiaMeloni) February 11, 2025

Prime minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday hailed the "extraordinary operation" carried out by Palermo's Carabinieri command which has dealt "a very hard blow" to Cosa Nostra.

Meloni said in a post on X that the operation confirms "the State's incessant commitment to the fight against organised crime", adding: "The mafia must be defeated with determination and without any compromise."

• A brief history of Italy's most powerful mobs

The operation comes just over two years after police in Palermo arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, at the time Italy's most wanted mafia boss, who had been on the run for 30 years.

Messina Denaro was transferred to L'Aquila prison where he was placed under the tough 41-bis regime before being moved to hospital where he died just nine months after his capture.

In 2002, while in hiding, he was tried and sentenced to life in jail in absentia over dozens of murders, including the 1992 killing of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.