Italian police have arrested 46 alleged mobsters, including 80-year-old Settimo Mineo, who investigators say was recently elected the head of a notorious mafia body.

The carabinieri struck at dawn on Tuesday in the Sicilian province of Palermo, acting against those accused of resurrecting, after 25 years, the fearsome Cupola, or Sicilian mafia commission, a body made up of the leading members of Cosa Nostra, which decides important questions concerning criminal actions such as killings.

“When you try to resurrect the Cupola, it means you are about to do something really serious,’’ said Francesco Lo Voi, Palermo’s chief prosecutor, in a press conference. “We needed to stop them before it was too late.’’

Mineo, the owner of a jewellery shop in Corso Tukory, Palermo, is the Sicilian mafia’s oldest boss. He was arrested in 1984 by the legendary prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, who was assassinated by Cosa Nostra in 1992, and jailed for mafia-related crimes.

The existence of the Cupola, which included the most powerful Sicilian bosses in a sort of G7 of the mafia, first came to light during the Maxi trial in 1986-87. The last head of that commission was the most ruthless godfather of the Sicilian mafia, Salvatore “Totò” Riina, nicknamed “the Beast” and known for having personally killed and ordered the assassination of dozens maybe hundreds of people, including magistrates and policemen.

To date, the total number of the Cupola’s victims remains a mystery. Riina died in prison in 2017 after he was arrested in 1993, and until the day of his death he remained, at least officially, the head of the Cupola.

More than 4,000 mafiosi have been arrested in Sicily since the arrest of Riina, and hundreds of millions of euros have been confiscated, weakening the power of Cosa Nostra throughout Sicily. Yet the mafia, wounded and staggering, has never completely surrendered, trying several times to reorganise and resuscitate itself.

‘‘The mafia will never accept defeat,’’ said the former magistrate Giuseppe Di Lello, who worked in the anti-mafia taskforce that was chasing Riina in the 1980s, when the mafia was at the height of its power.

He is one of the few anti-mafia magistrates from those years who is still alive. Many of his colleagues, including Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, were killed on the order of the Cupola. “But every time the bosses try to raise their heads, the authorities block them before they get up. The reality is that after Riina’s death there were no more bosses able to replace him. Not to mention that thanks to new technologies, such as telephone tapping and surveillance cameras, it is difficult for the mafia to move without going unnoticed.’’

Mineo, the elderly boss arrested at dawn who had to replace Totò Riina at the helm of Cosa Nostra, knew this well. He did not have a mobile phone and went about on foot for fear that the police had put bugs in his car. “The other mobsters chose him, because Mineo represented the old Cosa Nostra,” said Federico Cafiero de Raho, chief of the anti-mafia national prosecution office. “And by choosing him, they also chose the old methods of intimidations, like sending severed lamb’s heads to the businessmen who refused to pay the protection money.’’

Mineo risked being killed in 1982 in an ambush by a rival mafia family.

He immediately earned the respect of Riina, who gave him a leading role. He was arrested in 1984 for mafia-related crimes and then again in 2006, serving over 10 years in prison, but he never cooperated with the police.

In 1982 a rival murdered his brother in Mineo’s jewellery store.

Some time ago he tried to go to the US, but the authorities denied him a visa.

Typical of Mineo’s old-school mafioso methods, he tried not to attract attention, keeping a low profile, aware that his every move could be discovered by the police. But it wasn’t enough.