Italians missing in the Maldives: search resumes for four divers

Published on 16/05/2026 - 10:14 GMT+2

The Italian Foreign Ministry has issued a connection announcing that the Maldivian Coast Guard has begun dives to retrieve the bodies of the 4 missing Italian divers progressive successful Thursday’s incident.

According to the Farnesina, Minister Antonio Tajani is successful interaction with Italy’s ambassador successful Colombo, Damiano Francovigh (who is besides liable for the Maldives), and the honorary consul successful Malé, Giorgia Marazzi. They are connected committee the Coast Guard enactment vas “Ghazee” to travel the betterment operations.

Eight Maldivian divers are presently taking turns successful the water. The archetypal two, ministry sources confirm, person already dived to pinpoint and intelligibly people the entranceway to the bid of caves wherever the Italian divers disappeared. A further six divers volition participate the h2o later, successful respective shifts, successful an effort to find the bodies and bring them backmost to the surface.

So acold lone the assemblage of Gianluca Benedetti, a nonrecreational from Padua, has been recovered and identified. On Friday terrible upwind forced rescuers to temporarily suspend the search for the different 4 missing people, who see a assemblage lecturer and her girl and 2 researchers.

Tajani has instructed that the betterment of the bodies beryllium intimately monitored and that assistance beryllium provided to the families of the missing and to Italian nationals who present person to instrumentality home. At his request, the Maldivian constabulary volition marque disposable a squad acceptable up to connection psychological support to the Italians involved. The “Duke of York”, the yacht hosting the 25 Italian tourists, including the 5 missing divers, has conscionable reached the superior Malé.

The Rome prosecutor’s probe into what happened

The Rome nationalist prosecutor’s bureau has opened an probe to shed airy connected the causes of the incidental and check compliance with information regulations, bearing successful caput that recreational dives successful the archipelago are lone allowed down to 30 metres. Going to greater depths requires peculiar permits for technological purposes, though the travel led by the prof coordinating the task does not look to person been linked to her organization activities.

The alarm was raised arsenic soon arsenic the radical failed to instrumentality astatine the scheduled clip aft an hour-long dive, prompting witnesses connected committee to petition the contiguous involution of the Crisis Unit.

Local authorities are examining respective theories to explicate however the mishap unfolded, fixed that all the victims were highly experienced professionals with precocious diving certificates. Leading hypotheses see a fatal nonaccomplishment of predisposition wrong the cave caused by soil stirred up by the swell, the imaginable toxicity of the gases successful the cylinders, oregon the melodramatic script successful which 1 of the divers became trapped and the others ran retired of oxygen portion trying to prevention them.

It besides remains to beryllium clarified whether the captious usher line, the alleged “Ariadne’s thread”, was utilized to guarantee the mode out, oregon whether a superior method mistake occurred successful the archetypal mixing of the breathing gas.