NAPLES, Italy, Nov 1, 2009 (AFP) - Italian police arrested on Sunday two brothers suspected of ruling over a Naples mafia clan, less than 24 hours after capturing another sibling who had also been on the run for years.

Police arrested Pasquale Russo, 62, and his youngest brother Carmine, 47, in a 2:00 am raid on a cottage in Sperone, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Naples.

Pasquale Russo, on the run since 1993, is considered the boss of a Camorra mafia clan bearing his name and has been convicted several times for murder and for association with the mafia. Carmine Russo had been a fugitive since 2007.

Their other brother, Salvatore Russo, 51, who had been on the run since 1995, was arrested on Saturday morning after he was found hiding in a farm.

Officials hailed the arrests as a blow to Naples's Camorra, an organisation of several dozen families affiliated to often feuding clans. It is believed to be 5,000-strong.

Pasquale Russo was "the big boss of the clan and has been on the most-wanted list for 16 years", a spokesman for the paramilitary carabinieri police in Naples said.

Police said the investigations "proved unequivocally" Pasquale Russo's relations with the heads of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia.

During the raid in Sperone, a 53-year-old baker, unknown to police but who was housing the two Russo brothers, was also arrested.

A Beretta pistol, two munitions cartridges, a night vision goggles and a microphone detector were found in his home.

Salvatore Russo was found hiding behind a wall when he was arrested on Saturday at a chicken and rabbit farm on the outskirts of Naples as he returned from a hunting trip, his favourite hobby.

According to investigators, the arrest Saturday spread panic in the clan, which allowed police to gather facts from phone tapping and to launch the lightning raid against the other brothers.

The Russo clan controlled "all the illicit activities in a vast area" comprising some 40 towns in the Naples region, police said on Saturday.

The Russo brothers had reorganised the structure of the Camorra in the early 1990s after the boss of the region, Carmine Alfieri, turned and cooperated with the authorities, police said.

The Russos "exercised absolute control over their territory", police said.

"It is a particularly cruel clan," journalist and mafia expert Liro Abbate told AFP.

"They have numerous homicides to their name and small Neapolitan clans even call on them to carry out their bloodiest operations, like murder or hiding dead bodies," Abbate said.

Sociologist Giacomo Di Gennaro said the Russo brothers exert their control "thanks to extortion of funds, international drugs and arms trafficking, and the infiltration of local institutions."

'It is the clan with an organisation closest to the Sicilian mafia," Gennaro said, "with a very strict recruitment, hierarchical family and pyramid structure, and particularly bloody operations."

Di Gennaro said the arrests "also show the power of the state", but added that "the struggle is not over" given Naples has about 70 clans of various sizes.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni on Saturday saluted the "efficiency" of the action, while Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa paid homage to the carabinieri police for this "hard blow" to the criminal gang.

The Naples prosecutor Giovandomenico Lepore, who described the two operations as "magisterial", said the fight against the Camorra required significant resources.

With their detectors and their scanners, they "use our (technological) methods but they have far superior economic resources," he said.