Italian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Damiano Francovigh and Honorary Consul in Mal\u00e8 Giorgia Marazzi are working with Maldivian authorities to conduct searches for the bodies of the four divers who died in a scuba accident in the Vaavu Atoll. One of the bodies was recovered by the Coast Guard. With a view to strengthening the Foreign Ministry\u2019s team in Mal\u00e8, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has ordered to dispatch additional staff to the island, ready to support colleagues engaged in the search for the bodies and to contact their families.<\/p>\n
Maldives\u2019 authorities confirmed that, upon receiving news of the disappearance of the five Italians on Thursday, they immediately activated the search protocol, conducting flights to search the area and dispatching Coast Guard vehicles.<\/p>\n
Another dive by Coast Guard divers (following yesterday’s), aimed at exploring the cave’s access points, took place this morning between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 local time. According to initial reconstructions of events, the cave the five divers entered is divided into three large chambers connected by narrow passages. Today’s dive explored two of the three chambers and, taking place at great depths, did not allow for a longer dive than permitted due to the lack of oxygen for decompression.<\/p>\n
A further dive will be conducted tomorrow to explore the cave’s third chamber. The Italian Ambassador, in coordination with the Foreign Ministry, is in contact with local authorities for any possible assistance and with the families of the Italian victims.<\/p>\n
Among the victims are Monica Montefalcone, Associate Professor of Ecology, and Muriel Oddenino, a research fellow. The two marine biologists, affiliated with the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Life Sciences (DISTAV) of the University of Genoa, also collaborated with the Agency for Development Cooperation in Tirana as part of the European-funded project “EU for Nature.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Damiano Francovigh and Honorary Consul in Mal\u00e8 Giorgia Marazzi are working with Maldivian authorities to conduct searches for the bodies of the four divers who died in a scuba accident in the Vaavu Atoll. One of the bodies was recovered by the Coast Guard. With a view to strengthening the […]","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":184653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,7],"class_list":["post-188394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comunicati","tag-asia-e-oceania","tag-italiani-nel-mondo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188397,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188394\/revisions\/188397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}