The bodies of two Italian cave divers have been recovered from an underwater network in the Maldives, according to local officials.
The two were part of a group of five who died last week, with one of the bodies recovered outside the cave network on Friday. Efforts to recover the other four bodies were suspended over the weekend after a local military diver also died during the mission to reach them.
The bodies were found about 60 metres deep after search operations resumed following the death of the military diver during an earlier rescue attempt.
Earlier, the Maldives government spokesperson, Ahmed Shaam, said that the three divers would recover the bodies from a depth of about 60 metres (200 feet) and bring them to within 30 metres (nearly 100 feet) of the surface, where the Maldives coast guard would take over before handing them to police.
On Monday, the Maldives government said that three Finnish diving experts, assisted by police and military personnel, located the bodies in the deepest section of the cave.
“As was previously thought, the four bodies were found inside the cave, not only inside the cave, but well inside the cave into the third segment of the cave, which is the largest part,” Mr Shaam said earlier.
He said that the four bodies were found “pretty much together”.
The Maldivian government is planning to recover the bodies of two other divers on Wednesday.
The five divers were identified as Monica Montefalcone, a marine ecologist at the University of Genoa; her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, a biomedical engineering student at the same university; Muriel Oddenino, a research fellow; Federico Gualtieri, a former student of the ecologist; and Gianluca Benedetti, a diving instructor.
