BELLA NAPLES

(ANSA) - Naples, March 20 - Police arrested over 170 people Tuesday in a massive operation targeting two of the main drug clans of the Neapolitan Mafia.Police said the swoop was the result of an investigation into the Giuliano and Mazzarella clans, which are suspected of controlling much of the drugs trade in central Naples. "Today's operation is important because it hits the clans' greatest source of income," said Tommaso Pellegrino, a Green Party MP and secretary of Parliament's Anti-Mafia Committee. "You have to impoverish the crime world to defeat it".In some cases whole families were detained in raids carried out by around 1,000 officers in Naples and the surrounding province, police sources said.The operation also showed that women are increasingly assuming high-ranking positions in organized crime gangs, taking the places of incarcerated male mobsters. A number of the people arrested on Tuesday were women suspected of being bosses of the local Mafia or Camorra operations.