More than 1,200 Italian anti-Mafia police this morning made nearly a 100 arrests in Palermo and Tuscany what they described as an "historic" crackdown designed to "decapitate" Mafia clans and prevent them from "resurrecting" Cosa Nostra.

With helicopters and dog handlers, the police arrested the heads and members of Mafia clans suspected of plotting to resuscitate the Sicilian mafia, weakened by the arrest two years ago in a rundown farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily of Bernardo Provenzano, the Cosa Nostra Godfather, or "boss of bosses", after more than four decades on the run.

The latest operation, codenamed "Perseus", comes after a nine-month investigation involving surveillance and phone wiretaps, police said. It was aimed above all at associates of Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia boss from Trapani in Sicily who is said to have assumed the mantle of Provenzano as Godfather.

Messina Denaro, who is wanted on multiple counts of murder and is noted for his love of fast cars, glamorous women and computer gadgetry, was not among those arrested. He is said to be seeking to re-organise Cosa Nostra after Provenzano's downfall, just as Provenzano rebuilt Cosa Nostra after the arrest in 1993 of Toto Riina, his predecessor as Godfather.

Whereas Riina embarked on a campaign of murder and terrorism aimed at the Italian state — including the killing by car bombs of two highly respected anti-Mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992 — Provenzano quietly re-established the power of the Sicilian Mafia by reverting to traditionally profitable but less dramatic criminal activities such as money laundering, drugs, arms and people trafficking, and extortion rackets.

Messina Denaro is said to have continued this strategy. However Pietro Grasso, the national anti-Mafia prosecutor, said there was evidence that the re-organised Mafia was again thinking of "grave acts of violence" against State institutions. "One's mind goes back to the events of 1992," he said. Mr Grasso said that the new Mafia hierarchy was a combination of older Mafia bosses and younger gangsters.

The 99 detained alleged mafiosi will be charged with Mafia association, extortion, and arms and drugs trafficking. Mr Grasso said: "The 2006 operation had brought Cosa Nostra to its knees, and Perseus has prevented it from rearing its head again." In Palermo the swoop focused on the notorious Mafia strongholds of Bagheria and Belmonte Mezzagno.

On Monday Italian police arrested 25 members of a Sicilian Mafia cocaine smuggling gang in a crackdown that investigators said proved that Cosa Nostra was still "a major player in drugs".

The gang is alleged to have smuggled the drugs to Palermo from Argentina via London, Paris, Vienna, and Amsterdam to avoid detection. The drugs were brought together in Milan and then sent via drugs couriers to Palermo by train and ferry.

Some recent Italian studies of the drugs trade have identified the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, as the main organiser of the European cocaine trade, rather than the Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra. However Carlo Vizzini, a member of the Parliamentary Anti Mafia Commission who also serves as the expert on trans-national organised crime at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said that Cosa Nostra was still clearly "a force to be reckoned with" in the cocaine trade.

"Leopards cannot change their spots,'' Mr Vizzini said. "Sicily is once again becoming a key cross-roads for the international drugs trade''. Antonio Ingrao, the ant- Mafia prosecutor in Palermo, said that the operation, in which French anti-drugs police also took part, showed that ''the activities of Sicilian crime organisations are increasingly projected towards international horizons''. He said that the drugs business ''today more than ever has a strategic role because it allows criminals from different countries to work together.'

Investigators said that they had uncovered the cocaine ring when tracking down Ferrante Drago, a wanted Palermo Mafia boss on the run, and Marcello Lupo, his right-hand man and allegedly a key figure in the Italian-Latin American drugs trade. The police crackdown also netted nearly €10,000 worth of counterfeit cash.

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