The bod­ies of three of the four divers who were trapped in a Paria Fu­el pipeline since Fri­day have been re­cov­ered.

The bod­ies were re­moved from the pipe this af­ter­noon and the fam­i­lies of the three men have been in­formed by the com­pa­ny.

The iden­ti­ties of the men is still un­clear.

Paria Lim­it­ed is­sued a state­ment con­firm­ing the re­cov­ery.

"It is with deep sad­ness that we an­nounce the re­cov­ery of the bod­ies of three of the four divers who went miss­ing on Fri­day 25th Feb­ru­ary 2022. The bod­ies of these three miss­ing divers were re­cov­ered to­day (28 Feb­ru­ary 2022) around 5.55 pm. The fam­i­lies of the de­ceased were first to be no­ti­fied si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly at 6.00 pm by Paria. At­tempts to re­trieve the fourth body are still on­go­ing," the com­pa­ny said.

It added: "Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Paria) joins the fam­i­lies in mourn­ing their loss and is con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide sup­port and coun­selling as they deal with this pro­found loss. The four men were part of a LM­CS Lim­it­ed crew con­duct­ing an un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance ex­er­cise at #36 Sealine ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria, Pointe-a-Pierre when the in­ci­dent oc­curred. No ef­fort was spared in the at­tempts to treat the bod­ies with the ut­most re­spect dur­ing the re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion. A full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent will be un­der­tak­en to un­der­stand the root cause of the in­ci­dent.

Paria joins LM­CS Lim­it­ed and the fam­i­lies in their time of grief."

As news broke, griev­ing rel­a­tives at­tempt­ed to storm in­to the gates of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Lim­it­ed on Mon­day evening.

Pres­i­dent of the First Wave Move­ment Umar Ab­dul­lah called on the rel­a­tives to stay calm but he was shout­ed down.

"Non­sense, this is a waste of time. It's three days now we are wait­ing," a rel­a­tive of div­er Yusuff Hen­ry shout­ed be­fore she broke down in tears.

"To­day is Mon­day and we have no word," an­oth­er rel­a­tive shout­ed.

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has is­sued con­do­lences on the deaths of the four men.

"It is with great sad­ness that we have just re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion that four cit­i­zens have lost their lives whilst on tech­ni­cal sub­sea du­ty at Paria fa­cil­i­ties in the Gulf of Paria. Even as we prayed and hoped for a mir­a­cle, it was not to be. In this pe­ri­od of great loss and deep trau­ma for all the fam­i­lies and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, I ex­tend sin­cer­est con­do­lences to all their loved ones," he said in a post at 6.50 pm.

He added: "I want to give the as­sur­ance to the fam­i­lies that noth­ing will stand in the way of de­ter­min­ing how this tragedy oc­curred. I al­so want to com­mit to them that all that has to be done by Paria and its as­so­ciates in this mat­ter will be pro­fes­sion­al­ly ex­e­cut­ed start­ing with the al­ready an­nounced in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing the best pro­fes­sion­al and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise avail­able to the coun­try.

It is in times like these that we are called up­on to be car­ing and com­fort­ing and I have every con­fi­dence that our na­tion will not be found want­i­ng."

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3 pm Fri­day just off the Pointe-a-Pierre jet­ty as five divers em­ployed with LM­CS Ltd were con­duct­ing an un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance ex­er­cise at No 36 Sealine Ris­er on Berth #6.

The men were sucked in­to the pipeline and while one man­aged to free him­self, the oth­er four re­mained trapped since then.

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