Police arrested 15 people across northern Italy in raids against a far-left terrorist group with ideological ties to the Red Brigades movement that terrorized Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, officials said.
The arrests took place in Milan, Turin, Padua and other cities in northern Italy.
Those arrested were accused of subversive association and forming an armed gang, state police said in a statement.
"Probably, this time, we succeeded in preventing a Brigades attack," said Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, whose ministry includes state police and civilian intelligence agents. He gave no details.
The group targeted in the raids "was a structured and highly dangerous organization" and not the last of the extreme left-wing domestic terrorists, Amato said in a statement.
"The one (group) we broke up, we know, isn't the last," the minister said.
Police conducted 80 searches, mainly of gathering places for leftists.
The investigation into the group began in 2004, when police searched a Milan basement where they found documents, a blow torch, a timer and other electronic equipment, the statement said.
The Red Brigades plagued Italy with attacks that included the 1978 kidnapping and slaying of former Premier Aldo Moro.
After about a decade of silence, an offshoot of the group reappeared, killing two government advisers, in 1999 and 2002.
The group targeted in the raids financed itself through armed robberies and spread propaganda in leftist hubs and in factories where some of the alleged members worked, anti-terrorism official Giovani Calesini told SKY TG24 TV.
