Italian police arrest mafia boss hidden in bunker.

Mafia boss Michele Zagaria, one of Italy's most wanted men, was captured on Wednesday after police drilled into a concrete underground bunker where the man known as "Twisted Head" was hiding.

Zagaria, who had been on the run for 16 years, was head of the Casalesi clan of the Camorra that controlled a swathe of territory north of Naples. The clan inspired Roberto Saviano's best-selling book "Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia," which was made into a violent, prize-winning movie.

The 53-year-old, sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for murder in 2008, was captured in his home town of Casapesenna, police said.

Zagaria's bunker was about 50 square metres (540 sq feet) in size and hidden behind a 5-metre (16 feet) thick wall of reinforced concrete that opened and closed electronically.

Police cut off electricity and air to the bunker, and then drilled through the wall, according to police sources. The bunker was decorated with crucifixes and sacred images, and it was clear that he had lived there for years, they said.

The mug shot distributed on Wednesday showed an ageing, grey-haired man, startlingly different from the picture of a tough-looking, dark-haired Zagaria that had been posted on the Interior Ministry's page of Italy's Most Wanted.

"This is a great day, but the battle against these criminal entrepreneurs is far from over," Saviano told Ansa news agency. Saviano today lives under police protection because Zagaria wanted him dead.

The Casalesi, unlike the fragmented Camorra clans within the city of Naples, had consolidated control over a large geographic area. It used proceeds from drug trafficking and extortion to invest in a range of legitimate investments at home and abroad, from trash collection to construction, informed Reuters.