THE HAGUE: Police have arrested more than 1,000 suspects and rescued at least 30 trafficked children in an unprecedented swoop on organized crime groups across Europe, Europol’s chief said on Wednesday.

The continent-wide raids targeted gangs involved in people trafficking, cybercrime, narcotics and illegal gun trafficking, among others.

Carried out by some 20,000 officers between Sept. 15-23, Operation Archimedes “was the single largest coordinated assault an organized crime in Europe,” Rob Wainwright told reporters in The Hague.

“The scale of the operation is unprecedented,” he added.

Police officers from all 28 EU members, as well as Australia, Colombia, Norway, the US, Serbia and Switzerland, carried out 250 operations in some 300 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.