Terror Cell Planned 'Big Jihad In Italy'

Members of an al Qaeda-inspired terrorist group in Italy spoke of carrying out a "big jihad" in intercepted telephone calls, police have said.

Conversations also suggested that the Vatican could be a possible target, Mario Carta, head of the police unit leading the investigation, said.

"We don't have proof, we have strong suspicion," he said.

Cagliari chief prosecutor Mauro Mura said a would-be suicide bomber arrived in Rome in 2010 to target the seat of the Catholic church, but did not go through with it. He said it was not clear why.

Italian police revealed earlier they have executed arrest warrants against 18 people, mainly Pakistanis and Afghans, implicated in an alleged plot to attack targets in the West, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The "vast anti-terrorism" operation was centred on a cell based on the Italian island of Sardinia but covered a total of seven Italian provinces, police revealed.

Two of the 18 were former bodyguards to Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan before his death in 2011, it was claimed.

Some were smuggled into Italy where they were given work contracts.

Others were given false documents to allow them to pose as refugees seeking asylum from religious or ethnic persecution, according to Italian magazine Panorama.

Some were of those who were able to settle were then sent on to cities in northern Europe, the police statement said.

In time, several returned to Pakistan or Afghanistan to carry out attacks before going back to Europe, Republicca quoted the statement as saying.

A number of the attacks in Afghanistan were directed at US forces. The Pakistan attacks were in a bid to topple the government.

Among the attacks the group were said to be responsible for was the bombing of a market in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in 2009 that killed more than 100 people.

One of the group, an imam, according to Repubblica, operated between Bergamo and Brescia and used the Hawala money transfer system to send money abroad to fund terrorism.

Sardinian daily L'Unione Sarda, meanwhile, reported that one of the suspects ran a construction business in Olbia.

The paper's editor Anthony Muroni told Italy's Sky TV news channel: "There is the hypothesis that he was recruiting immigrants who arrived here by airplane with false documents and involved them in illegal activities."

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the success of the operation showed that Italian police were able to take effective action when circumstances demanded it.

"(It) means that our system works," he said

Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda's former leader, was killed in a raid on his hideout in Abbottabad by US special forces.