U.S. authorities arrested 54 organized crime suspects including what they considered three high-ranking members of the Gambino crime family in an operation in New York and Italy, officials said. A number of arrests had also been made in Sicily, judicial sources in Italy said.

Charges were being filed against 62 people including the street boss, the under boss and the consigliere of the Gambino family -- the three highest ranking members not already in prison, a U.S. law enforcement source said.

Fifty-four were arrested early on Thursday, mostly in the New York area, on accusations of murder, racketeering, extortion, loan-sharking and labor violations including pension fund embezzlement, the source said.

The Italian Interior Ministry was also due to hold a news conference about a "large operation against organized crime" on Thursday afternoon, without giving details.

Earlier on Thursday, judicial sources in Sicily said a large anti-Mafia operation code-named "Old Bridge" involved arrests warrants issued on both sides of the Atlantic.

The operation was being carried out by police in Italy -- mostly in Sicily -- and the FBI in the United States -- mostly in the New York area, the Italian sources said.

In what appeared to be a separate operation in Naples, police arrested a suspected leading figure of that southern city's criminal underworld on Thursday.

Vincenzo Licciardi, 42, purportedly a boss of the Camorra crime group, was arrested in a Naples suburb. He had been on the run since 2004 and was one of Italy's 30 most wanted criminals, police said.

He is linked to the Secondigliano clan, part of the fragmented Camorra whose criminal activities include illegal waste disposal, one of the causes of an emergency in Naples where refuse collection has all but collapsed.

The Camorra is thought to be much less unified in structure that the Sicilian Mafia, made up of rival clans that often clash violently in turf wars.