A group of expert Finnish divers may have solved the mystery surrounding the deaths of five Italians who perished while exploring deep-sea caves in the Maldives.
The Italian divers set off to explore caves in the Vaavu Atoll last Thursday, but never resurfaced.
The body of diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti was found near the mouth of the cave on the day the divers disappeared, while the remaining four bodies were located on Monday at a depth of around 165ft.
Mystery has clouded the tragedy, which has been called the worst diving incident in the island nation, and investigators are trying to determine how the group of experienced divers met their fate.
Now, a team of expert divers from Finland, who recovered the bodies this week, have suggested the group of Italians may have taken the wrong tunnel on their way out of an underwater cave.
The pro-divers, working for Dan Europe - a medical and research organisation dedicated to the health and safety of scuba divers - found the Italians in a corridor with a dead end inside the cave complex, Italy's La Repubblica daily reported.
'There was no way out from there,' the company's CEO, Laura Marroni, was quoted by La Repubblica as saying.
The Italian divers included Monica Montefalcone, a marine biology professor with many years of experience; her daughter, Giorgia Sommacal; two young researchers, Federico Gualtieri and Muriel Oddenino; and their Maldives-based guide, Benedetti.
A diver from Finland takes part in a recovery operation for the last two bodies of Italian scuba divers who died in an accident in underwater caves near Vaavu Atoll, Maldives, in this handout photo released on May 20, 2026
The Finnish divers found the cave near Alimatha begins with a first large, very bright cavern with a sandy bottom, Marroni told the newspaper.
At the end of this room is a corridor where there is little light, but 'visibility, using artificial lighting, was excellent', she said.
The corridor is almost 30 metres long and three metres across and leads to a second chamber of the cave, which is a large, round space with no natural light.
Between the corridor and the second chamber is a sandbank.
It is easy to get over the sandbank into the second chamber, but when you turn around to leave again, the bank almost looks like a wall, hiding the corridor, the paper said.
On the left of the sandbank is another corridor - only a few dozen metres long.
'The divers' bodies were all found inside, as if they had mistaken it for the right one,' the paper said.
If they had taken that corridor by mistake, 'then it would have been very difficult to return, especially with the limited air supply', Marroni said.
Montefalcone's daugter, Giorgia, is among the five divers who died
Pictured: Researcher Muriel Oddenino. Her body was recovered from a deep-sea cave on Wednesday
The divers were using standard tanks, meaning that, at that depth, they had very little time to visit the second cave, she said.
'We're talking about 10 minutes, maybe even less,' Marroni said.
'Realising that the path is the wrong one and having little air, perhaps after going back and forth, is terrifying. Then you breathe quickly, and the air supply decreases,' she said.
Authorities in the Maldives are investigating how the Italians were allowed to descend to a depth of nearly 200ft when the Indian Ocean country permits a maximum depth of 98ft for tourists.