{"id":82993,"date":"2026-02-20T14:19:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/body-found-at-sea-near-paradise-bay-in-advanced-state-of-decomposition\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:19:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:19:00","slug":"body-found-at-sea-near-paradise-bay-in-advanced-state-of-decomposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/body-found-at-sea-near-paradise-bay-in-advanced-state-of-decomposition\/","title":{"rendered":"Body found at sea near Paradise Bay in advanced state of decomposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Body found at sea near Paradise Bay in advanced state of decomposition<\/p>\n<p>A body was discovered at sea near Paradise Bay in Mellie&#295;a on Friday afternoon, prompting an ongoing search and recovery operation by the Armed Forces of Malta, with assistance from the Malta Police Force.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities said the police were alerted at around 1pm after the body was spotted in the water in an advanced state of decomposition.<\/p>\n<p>Following the report, AFM personnel were immediately deployed to the scene to conduct a search and recovery operation in the waters around Paradise Bay and &#266;irkewwa. Police officers were also called to assist on site, as was the Civil Protection Department.<\/p>\n<p>Magistrate Philip Galea Farrugia has launched an inquiry and appointed a number of experts to assist.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Officials have not yet released details about the identity of the deceased.<\/p>\n<p>This is the second discovery of a body this week. A dead body had been found at sea near Fomm ir-Ri&#295; and brought ashore on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>RSS Feed Source: Independent Malta <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.com.mt\/articles\/2026-02-20\/local-news\/Body-found-at-sea-near-Paradise-Bay-as-AFM-launches-search-operation-6736287406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Body found at sea near Paradise Bay in advanced state of decomposition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Body found at sea near Paradise Bay in advanced state of decomposition A body was discovered at sea near Paradise Bay in Mellie&#295;a on Friday afternoon, prompting an ongoing search and recovery operation by the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2139],"tags":[1850],"class_list":["post-82993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malta-news","tag-abatement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shopsofmalta.com\/malta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}