Over 600 Rome officers municipal police launched on Tuesday a large-scale operation to confiscate and demolish eight villas in the east of the Italian capital illegally built by members of the powerful Casamonica mafia clan.

The Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, announced the beginning of the operation,  as she arrived at the scene with the police and personally took control of the ongoing, ANSA reported. 

 "Today we are clearing and knocking down eight illegal villas," Raggi, a member of the 5-Star Movement (M5S), said via Facebook.

All villas were illegally built on municipal lands by members of the Casamonica clan in the 1990s. Attempts to confiscate buildings and evict tenants have already been made by metropolitan law enforcement officers, but later representatives of the criminal gang settled in these villas again.