The bodies of four Italian divers missing in the Maldives have been located in the third segment of the "Shark Cave" near Vavu Atoll . The Farnesina confirmed this.
The Dan Europe diving team has been working since this morning to attempt to recover the bodies of the divers who never surfaced after last Thursday's excursion into a cave 50 meters deep, in the waters of Alimatha.
The team is made up of three expert Finnish cave divers: Sami Paakkarinen, Jenni Westerlund, and Patrik Grönqvist. The bodies of Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, Muriel Oddenino, and Federico Gualtieri are in the cave. The bodies of the fifth victim, Gianluca Benedetti, were recovered on Friday.
However, we must wait for the recovery of the bodies. The Maldives National Defense Forces (MNDF) announced on X the discovery "in a joint operation conducted by the Maldives Armed Forces Coast Guard, the police, and foreign divers." The bodies have been located, but recovery operations from the cave are not yet complete. Therefore, further dives are planned to recover the bodies, local media report .
Specifically, Maldivian government spokesman Mohamed Hussain Shareef told CNN that rescuers expect to recover two of the four Italian bodies on Tuesday and the other two on Wednesday . According to Shareef, Dan's three Finnish divers were joined by a fourth expert and the local coast guard. Specialized equipment is being provided by the United Kingdom and Australia, and the team has underwater scooters and gas tanks capable of recycling air. Each dive on the Maldives recovery missions is limited to approximately three hours, and if an obstacle is encountered, the dive is aborted and the divers return to the surface.
(Unioneonline)
