Bodies of Missing Divers Found in Shark Cave After Maldives’ Diving Tragedy [WATCH]

Four missing Italian divers were found Monday inside an underwater cave in the Maldives, four days after they disappeared during a research dive that has become the country’s worst diving disaster, as reported by The New York Post.

Italy’s foreign ministry said an expert dive team from Finland located Monica Montefalcone, 52, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, 20, Muriel Oddenino, 31, and Federico Gualtieri, 31, inside Thinwana Kandu cave, also known as “shark cave.”

The cave is located in Vaavu Atoll, about 60 miles south of Male, the capital of the Maldives.

This is so sad, but also a VERY risky dive to attempt..Five Italian divers died in the Maldives yesterday. The divers were exploring a cave, approximately 160 ft deep.

Maldivian authorities are currently conducting high risk searches to try and recover their bodies. https://t.co/lLXrdnfzue— Unmasked True Crime (@crimeunmasked) May 15, 2026

The four had been missing since Thursday morning. Their discovery followed the earlier recovery of diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, 44, whose body was found Friday near the entrance to the same cave.

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Authorities said the remaining four divers were found in the third section of the cave, the area farthest from the entrance, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry. The causes of death for all five Italians have not yet been determined.

The search effort brought in a three-person elite diving team from Finland after local authorities did not have the necessary equipment to reach the depth required to enter the cave system. The team included Sami Paakkarinen, Jenni Westerlund, and Patrik Grönqvist, who arrived in the Maldives on Sunday.

The Finnish divers were assembled within 48 hours by Divers Alert Network Europe. The same divers previously participated in the 2018 rescue of a Thai soccer team, according to the report.

A recovery operation is expected to continue over the next several days.

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“Further dives [are] to be carried out in the coming days to recover the bodies,” Mohamed Hossain Shareef, a Maldivian government spokesperson, told BBC News.

The disaster unfolded during stormy weather, with police saying a yellow warning was in place for passenger boats and fishermen at the time of the Thursday morning dive.

The search also claimed the life of a Maldivian search diver. Sgt. Major Mohamed Mahudhee died Saturday while attempting to locate the missing tourists, making him the sixth person to die in connection with the disaster.

The Italian group had traveled aboard the Duke of York yacht, which was carrying 20 additional Italian tourists, when it headed toward the dive site on Thursday. Those tourists have since returned to Italy.

Authorities are continuing to investigate what led to the disaster and why the group entered the cave.

Shareef said the diving group, most of whom were from the University of Genoa, had permission to conduct a research mission focused on coral reefs, including deep dives. However, he said their proposal did not mention entering the cave.

Recreational scuba divers in the Maldives are only permitted to dive to depths of up to 100 feet, Shareef previously said. Officials have not explained why the group entered a cave described as nearly twice that depth.

The four remaining bodies of Italian scuba divers who died last week in a Maldives underwater cave have been found, the government said, in an accident officials described as the biggest tragedy of its kind in the country’s history https://t.co/PDMeB1Xfsy pic.twitter.com/t1rTbONf5m

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 18, 2026

The incident has drawn attention to safety questions surrounding deep dives, cave access, weather conditions, and the limits placed on recreational scuba activity in the Maldives.

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