Italy terror: Suspects had contact with bin Laden, discussed Vatican attack, by Greg Botelho, Don Melvin And Hada Messia, CNN (April 24, 2015)

Rome (CNN)Italian authorities said they had launched a "vast anti-terrorism operation" Friday, going after suspects associated with al Qaeda who had discussed a range of targets, including the Vatican.

Some members of the terrorist cell had direct contact with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before his death in Pakistan in 2011, wiretaps showed, Italy's state-run ANSA news agency reported.

And wiretaps and other intelligence revealed that the group planned to carry out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as in Italy, according to Caligari Chief Prosecutor Mauro Mura.

Some evidence indicated the Vatican was among the targets considered, police said. Talk of this took place March 2010, around the time a possible suicide bomber from Afghanistan entered Italy, Mura said.

Police said, too, that some of the suspects were involved in a Pakistani market bombing in 2009 in which more than 300 people were killed and injured

The suspects had been under surveillance for years, some as far back as 2005, police said.

On Friday, Italian State Police closed in, carrying out raids in seven provinces in what they called a first-of-its-kind operation. One of the raids targeted the alleged terrorist cell's headquarters on the island of Sardinia.

The operation, which is still going on, is expected to result in the arrest of 18 people, most of them from Pakistan, said spokesman Paolo Meloni, who represents the police in Sassari, Sardinia, where the investigation is being coordinated.

Some suspects had an abundance of weapons and moved cash around the world, police said. One was apprehended on a flight from Italy to Pakistan while carrying 55,000 euros, or nearly $60,000, police said.

Meloni said the provinces in which the raids were being carried out included Frosinone and Macerata, which are in central Italy, as well as Bergamo, in the north.

Some of those expected to be arrested are suspected of having been involved in the 2009 car bombing in Pakistan, Meloni said. In that bombing, in a bazaar in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, 137 people were killed and more than 200 were injured.

Still other suspects are suspected of involvement in migrant trafficking, he said. Police said the group tried to recruit to its cause the migrants it transported.