
Five Italian tourists died on Thursday (May 14) after they vanished in the waters of Vaavu Atoll.
Diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, 44, Muriel Oddenino, 31, and Federico Gualtieri, 31, as well as University of Genova lecturer Monica Montefalcone, 52, and her 20-year-old daughter, Giorgia Sommacal, passed away after they failed to resurface from the dive.
Meanwhile, while searching for the bodies of the divers, Sergeant Major Mohamed Mahudhee also lost his life after coming into difficulties during the operation.
Benedetti, the instructor, was found in the entrance of the mouth of the Thinwana Kandu cave, while the rest of the group were found a few days later on Monday, deeper into the cave, at the bottom of the third chamber.
The dangers of the Vaavu Atoll cave
An ex-military diver has spoken about the dangers of the third chamber and why the cave is so 'unforgiving'.
"I have visited those caves countless times. There is no current. They swam into that third cave. They chose to go in there," Shafraz Naeem claimed to the Daily Mail.
"I believe the instructor intentionally swam away from the group. Maybe he legged it up before he ran out of air. The rest of the group died in that third chamber and Benedetti died in the passageway trying to get out."
However, Mohamed Hossain Shareef, a Maldivian government spokesperson, told the BBC that Montefalcone's team had a permit for their scientific work, allowing them to descend to 50 metres.
'What we didn’t know was that it was cave diving'
He explained that they had permission to study coral, but no mention of a cave had been submitted.
“What we didn’t know was that it was cave diving,” Shareef said. “Because, as divers will tell you and appreciate, it’s a very different discipline with its own sets of challenges and risks involved, and particularly at that depth, there are any number of things that could have gone wrong.”
Diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti was among those who died (Albatros Top Boat)


















































