Police have arrested more than 1000 suspects and rescued at least 30 children from child traffickers in an unprecedented swoop on organised crime across Europe, Europol's chief says.
The September 15-23 Operation Archimedes "was the single largest co-ordinated assault on organised crime in Europe", Rob Wainwright told reporters on Wednesday in The Hague.
The continent-wide raids targeted gangs involved in people trafficking, cybercrime, narcotics and illegal gun trafficking.
Police officers from all 28 European Union members, as well as Colombia, Norway, the United States, Serbia and Switzerland, carried out 300 operations in cities, ports and border crossings across Europe.
"We designed an operation specifically to hit criminal infrastructure," Wainwright said at Europol's fortress-like headquarters in The Hague.
"Multiple criminal enterprises, some of them the most serious, have been disrupted right across Europe," he said.
In total, 1027 arrest were made, including 250 in Spain and 200 in Bulgaria, Wainwright said.
In one of the raids, 30 Romanian children were saved from child traffickers aiming to use the victims as sex slaves or slave labour, Wainwright said.
Police also seized about 600 kilograms of cocaine, 1.3 tonnes of cannabis and 200km of heroin.
"More arrests are expected to follow," Wainwright said.
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