Cops bust women mobsters

Italian police have swooped in on a Mafia clan in Sicily, arresting dozens in an international operation to dismantle a powerful crime group run by women.

Over 500 officers took part in the raid in Catania on Wednesday.

They pounced on the Laudani clan, nicknamed mussi di ficurinia (prickly pear lips), in a sting that involved forces in Germany and the Netherlands, Italian police said.

Three women, known as the "three queens of Caltagirone", a town near the Sicilian port of Catania, had ruled the clan with an iron grip but were brought down after the heir to the clan began helping the police.

The suspects were wanted for Mafia association, extortion, drug trafficking and illegal possession of arms.

Of the 109 people for whom arrest warrants had been issued on Wednesday, 80 were detained, 23 were already in prison and six are still eluding capture, police said.

Giuseppe Laudani was selected to run the clan when he was 17 after his Mafia-boss father was killed, but he turned to the police and told how the three women - Maria Scuderi, 51, Concetta Scalisi, 60 and Paola Torrisi, 52 - had raised him.

Known as "the prince", he described a world of violence and vendettas, with the women gaining power after his aunt Scalisi's life was saved by his father during an attempted assassination at the end of the 1980s.