Four Italian divers who went missing last Thursday in a scuba diving accident in the Maldives have been located inside an underwater cave, officials have confirmed to the BBC, as authorities prepare further dives to recover the remains.
The four bodies were found in the third and deepest section of a 60-meter-deep cave in Vaavu Atoll, some 100 kilometers south of the capital, Male, according to Italy’s foreign ministry. A joint team of Finnish and Maldivian divers located them following a multi-day search operation. The body of a fifth member of the group had already been recovered near the cave’s entrance on Thursday, the day the group went missing.
The victims were all Italian nationals. Four were affiliated with the University of Genoa: Prof. Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, and researchers Muriel Oddenino and Federico Gualtieri. The fifth was Gianluca Benedetti, a boat operations manager and diving instructor. The group had entered the water on Thursday morning and was reported missing after failing to resurface.
A Mission Under Scrutiny
The Maldivian government confirmed the group had received permission for a scientific research mission to study coral, including deep dives. However, a presidential spokesperson noted there was no mention of cave diving in their submitted proposal. Maldivian authorities said recreational scuba divers are authorized to dive to a maximum depth of 30 meters, leaving questions about why the group entered a cave nearly twice as deep.
Weather conditions in the area were rough at the time of the incident, with a yellow warning issued for passenger boats and fishermen.
Rescue Diver Also Dies
The search operation claimed another life on Saturday, when Staff Sgt. Mohamed Mahdhee, a Maldivian rescue diver, died while searching for the group’s remains. Mahdhee was one of eight rescue divers who entered the water that day.
“Eight rescue divers went into the water today. When they surfaced, they realized Mr. Mahdhee didn’t come up,” government spokesperson Mohamed Hossain Shareef told the BBC. The other divers re-entered the water immediately and found Mahdhee unconscious.
Recovery Ongoing
Shareef confirmed that additional dives would be required in the coming days to physically recover the bodies from the cave. “Further dives [are] to be carried out in the coming days to recover the bodies,” he said in a statement to the BBC.
Authorities say an investigation is ongoing to establish the cause of the accident. The incident is believed to be the deadliest single diving accident in the Maldives, a popular Indian Ocean tourist destination known for its coral islands.
