Italian police arrest 183 people in Sicily mafia blitz

 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.

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.