ROME: Italian police on Wednesday arrested 33 Sri Lankan Tamils charged with belonging to the outlawed Tamil Tigers group fighting a separatist insurgency against the government in Colombo, an official said.

Twenty-eight people were arrested in a series of pre-dawn raids in Naples, Genoa, Bologna and Sicily suspected of membership of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and of providing funding for the group, Antonio Sbordone, an official with the police counter-terrorism cell in Naples who coordinated the raids, said.

Five further Tamils were detained by authorities in Palermo, Sicily, also on suspicion of belonging to LTTE, in a separate police operation, the official said.

In addition to being charged with membership of a proscribed organisation, the 33 are also accused of having helped finance the Tamil Tigers through remittances.

These monies came through extortion of other Tamils, according to Sbordone, with reports on Italian TV speculating that the annual amount was around four million euros ($6.2 million).

Some 200 police were involved in the operation which saw raids across the country from Naples in the south to Bologna in the north, and also on the island of Sicily.

The LTTE is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union.

The Tigers have been fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka since 1972. Between 60,000 and 70,000 people have died in the conflict, several thousand of them since the collapse of a tentative peace process in 2005.

—AFP