Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy’s country's most wanted Mafia boss who has been on the run since 1993, has been arrested in a private hospital in the Sicilian capital Palermo.
Prosecutors say Messina Denaro, 60, is a boss of Sicily's Cosa Nostra Mafia.
He had been sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Police said they detained him at Palermo's La Maddalena hospital on Monday morning, in the city's northern suburbs.
Images on social media showed locals applauding and shaking hands with police in balaclavas as a minivan believed to contain the suspect was driven away.
Messina Denaro had been having appointments at the hospital for some time, Italy's Ansa news agency reported, adding that police had secretly moved officers into the building overnight to safeguard other patients.
Italian news agencies said he is believed to be suffering from cancer.
Messina Denaro also faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed 10 people the following year.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as "a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the Mafia".
The arrest comes almost 30 years to the day since police arrested Salvatore "Toto" Riina, the Sicilian Mafia's most powerful boss of the 20th century. He eventually died in jail in 2017, having never broke his code of silence.
― With AAP.
