PALERMO, Sicily - Police raided houses and hideouts around the Sicilian capital on Tuesday and arrested 46 Mafiosi they said formed an web of protection around top Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano, on the run for four decades.

The operation uncovered how Provenzano, 70-years-old and known in his younger years as "Binu the tractor" because of the way he would mow down his opponents, has managed the run the crime group like a phantom who continues to evade arrest.

"We have effectively dismantled Provenzano's Postal Ministry," Palermo's chief prosecutor Pietro Grasso told a news conference in the Sicilian capital.

Investigators said those arrested during the night in Palermo and surrounding towns had protected Provenzano and helped him communicate with Mafia "soldiers" in the field by ferrying messages back and forth.

A statement said the operation, carried out after a three-year investigation, dismantled "the logistic network of Bernardo Provenzano, which had guaranteed his communication with the entire Mafia organization."

They used an intricate system of paper or computer messages filtered through a network so the fewest number of people possible would know Provenzano's whereabouts.

Grasso said the operation had been brought forward because police had received information that some of those arrested may have been planning to flee Italy.

One of those arrested, Francesco Pistoia, was suspected of being the main link between Provenzano and various Mafia bosses throughout Sicily.

Provenzano, a native of the town of Corleone- made famous in "The Godfather" films- assumed control of the Mafia after the state scored major arrests against the mob in the early 1990, including that of top boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina in 1993.

A year before he was arrested, Riina, known as "the beast," declared war against the state and ordered the murders of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both killed by bombs in 1992.

Magistrates say Provenzano has changed the Mafia's strategy by limiting attacks against the state and managing internal dissent through consensus, persuasion and paternal largesse.

The last picture police have of Provenzano was taken nearly three decades ago and in it he looks like a handsome university athlete.

Using computer photofits of how he may have aged, police have come close to capturing him several times but his ability to elude them has become legendary. He escaped arrest again on Tuesday.