BMesh: How to get a list of faces and edges, given the vectors (and delete them)? I have a list of a centre vertice along with all its surrounding vertices.

listOfVectors = [ vertice, neighbour1, neighbour2, neighbour3, ... ]

I need to remove all edges and faces regarding those vertices to create further geometry and move the centre vertice around.

I'm actually creating a valley by dragging down a vertice inside a circle (with some cubic bézier parameters).

Currently, I'm iterating every face and edge on the mesh to see if every vector is contained in listOfVectors and removing them from the BMesh object. The problem is that my mesh has over 310,000 faces.

I've tried using bmesh.ops.delete(bm, geom = verticeList, context = DEL_EDGESFACES) (see below for list of constants), but that accomplishes exactly nothing. No errors, no changes.

Is there a way to make bmesh do the hard work for me? Or some approach to get the faces that's better than iterating on each one?

References

Constants used:

DEL_VERTS = 1
DEL_EDGES = 2
DEL_ONLYFACES = 3
DEL_EDGESFACES = 4
DEL_FACES = 5
DEL_ALL = 6 
DEL_ONLYTAGGED = 7

Source for the constants: https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/blender/source/blender/bmesh/intern/bmesh_operator_api.h

bmesh.ops.delete reference: https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_71_release/bmesh.ops.html#bmesh.ops.delete
I think that parameter geom is wrong.
geom (list of (bmesh.types.BMVert, bmesh.types.BMEdge, bmesh.types.BMFace)) 

import bpy
import bmesh

if bpy.context.mode != 'OBJECT':
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set()

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(segments=32, ring_count=16)
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_random(percent=50.0, seed=0, action='SELECT')

obj = bpy.context.active_object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

list = [v for v in bm.verts if v.select]
list += [e for e in bm.edges if e.select]
list += [f for f in bm.faces if f.select]

bmesh.ops.delete(bm, geom=list, context=4)

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)