The bodies of four Italian divers who went missing last week in the Maldives have been located inside an underwater cave at Vaavu Atoll, roughly 100 kilometres south of the capital, Malé, authorities have confirmed. The four were found in the cave's third and deepest section, approximately 60 metres below the surface, by a joint team of specialist Finnish and Maldivian divers following a three-hour operation. A fifth member of the Italian group had already been recovered near the cave's entrance shortly after the accident occurred on Thursday. The tragedy is believed to be the worst single diving incident in the history of the Maldives, a small Indian Ocean island nation renowned as a tourist and diving destination.

The group that entered the water consisted of Prof Monica Montefalcone and her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, marine researcher Muriel Oddenino, recent graduate Federico Gualtieri, and diving instructor and boat operations manager Gianluca Benedetti. Montefalcone and Oddenino were affiliated with the University of Genoa and held a valid research permit to study the impact of climate change on coral biodiversity, authorising dives to a depth of 50 metres. The cave entrance sits at 47 metres. However, the university stated that it had not approved any deep cave diving as part of the mission, and that the dive appeared to have been carried out