US and Italian police arrested at least 100 Mafia suspects in New York and Sicily on Thursday, decapitating the second largest crime family in the US and thwarting plans by a new generation of organised crime bosses to re-establish a transatlantic axis.

Police described Operation Old Bridge, the culmination of investigations that began five years ago, as the biggest combined effort since the “Pizza Connection” sweep of Mafia drug traffickers in the mid-1980s.