Messina Denaro, who has cancer, is in the hospital’s surgery department, amid tight security measures, the sources added.
Earlier on Tuesday, the mobster’s lawyer Alessandro Cerella said his health condition “has deteriorated” and it is “not compatible” with the tough 41 bis jail regime he was being held under.
“He needs care 24 hours a day,” said Cerella.
Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January at a Palermo cancer clinic after 30 years on the run.
The Cosa Nostra superboss has been convicted for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he has been condemned for the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt 40 more in 1993.
ANSA
