Hong Kong  - Seventeen people have been arrested over the execution of a feared triad gang leader outside a luxury hotel in Hong Kong, police said Friday.

Lee Tai-lung, 44, known as the "Baron of Tsim Sha Tsui East," was run down by a van outside the five-star Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel on August 4 and then hacked to death by three men with knives.

Police said the attack was a well-organized hit using a technique known among Hong Kong's notorious triad gangs as "ram and chop." The gangs run prostitution, drugs and extortion rackets across the city.

The assassins used caps to cover their faces, and the vehicles used were later found burned out 32 kilometres away in Tai Po near Hong Kong's border with mainland China.

Police say the murder bore the hallmarks of a hit by the Wo Shing Wo triad faction. Lee, a former boxer, had been linked to two attacks on high-ranking members of the gang in 2002 and 2006.

His killing appears to be connected to a long-running battle for control between Wo Shing Wo and Lee's Sun Yee On triad factions for control of the lucrative entertainment district in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Lee was a "red pole" fighter for the Sun Yee On triad faction, a senior member with a reputation as a ferocious fighter who often played the role of enforcer on behalf of his gang.

Seventeen suspects aged between 19 to 49 have now been arrested after a city-wide operation by officers from Hong Kong's specialized Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, a police spokesman said.

The influence of triad gangs in Hong Kong has waned since their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, but police estimate they remain responsible for 3 per cent of all crime in the city of 7 million. (dpa)