Scores arrested in anti-Mafia raids

Italian police arrested 119 people on Friday in anti-Mafia raids across Italy.

Officers backed by more than 800 soldiers launched dawn raids in the south-eastern port of Bari and other towns further north.

They were acting on arrest warrants for 131 people wanted on charges ranging from drug-trafficking to murder.

The operation comes after 32 people were arrested on Mafia-related charges in Sicily last month - including two government officials and a lawyer.

An Italian police spokesman in Bari, Major Giacobelli, told BBC News Online that arrests were made all over the country.

Besides Bari, cities targeted by the operation included Naples, Pisa, Rimini and Lodi.

Italian TV described the operation as an "attack on the heart of the Mafia".

Directed by police in Bari, the operation was aimed at "suspected members of a Mafia clan", the TV said.

Cocaine arrests

In what appears to have been a separate development on Friday, police also arrested 13 people on drugs charges in the northern city of Vicenza on Friday.

The detainees include nationals from Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Russia, Israel and Italy, Italian TV said.

They are suspected of smuggling cocaine into Italy and selling it in bars in Vicenza and nearby Padua.