Sri Lanka has evacuated more than 200 crew members from a second Iranian naval vessel off its coast, a day after a US submarine sank an Iranian frigate in the same waters, leaving 87 sailors dead.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake announced on Thursday that his navy would take custody of the second ship and move it to the northeastern port of Trincomalee for safekeeping, amid fears it could be targeted. He said his government held discussions with Iranian officials and the captain of the ship.
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Sri Lankan officials say 87 bodies were recovered and 32 people rescued from the roughly 180 people believed to have been on board IRIS Dena sunk on Wednesday.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday confirmed that a US submarine sank the vessel amid US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Cabinet spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa told parliament the vessel was positioned near Colombo, inside Sri Lanka’s exclusive economic zone but beyond its territorial waters, adding that authorities were doing “their utmost to safeguard lives”.
The developments came as Washington confirmed it had torpedoed the IRIS Dena, an Iranian frigate returning from a peacetime naval exercise hosted by India, marking the first time a US submarine has sunk an enemy warship by torpedo since the second world war.
Sri Lankan coastguards received a distress call from the IRIS Dena at 5:08am on Wednesday (23:28 GMT on Tuesday), with surviving crew describing an explosion. Rescue vessels arrived to find the frigate already gone, navy spokesperson Buddhika Sampath said, with only an oil slick and floating life rafts remaining at the scene.
Thirty-two survivors, all seriously injured, were taken to Galle National Hospital. Eighty-seven bodies were recovered from the sea, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said. More than 10 sailors remain missing.
The frigate, which was carrying about 180 crew, had been sailing home after participating in a major multinational naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal involving ships from 74 countries when it was struck roughly 44 nautical miles (81km) off Sri Lanka’s southern coast.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the strike at a Pentagon briefing, releasing black-and-white footage of a Mark 48 torpedo hitting the frigate’s stern. “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” he said. “Quiet death.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called it “an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles [3,219km] from Iran’s shores,” noting the ship had been a guest of India’s navy when struck without warning.
“The US will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set,” he wrote on social media. He later fired back at Trump’s claim that the operation was running ahead of schedule, “Plan A for a clean rapid military victory failed, Mr President.”
The IRIS Dena was one of more than 20 Iranian navy vessels destroyed since the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran on February 28, targeting the country’s leadership, missile arsenals and nuclear infrastructure in an operation aimed at dislodging the current government.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the second day of the attacks, triggering protests in the country and beyond.
As of Tuesday, not a single Iranian warship remained under way in the the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz or the Gulf of Oman, US Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper said.
Questions have also been raised about the legality of the attack in international waters.
The Israeli-US attacks have killed more than 1,000 people in Iran and displaced more than 100,000 from Tehran, according to the UN.
In a striking illustration of how far Washington’s war aims have stretched, Trump told Reuters on Thursday that the US intended to play a role in choosing Iran’s next supreme leader.
“We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future,” he said.
Sri Lanka, which has declared neutrality and called for “restraint and immediate de-escalation,” now finds itself hosting the human wreckage from a war being fought on its doorstep.
“Neutrality and humaneness is the priority. We have responsibilities as a neutral country. All parties must be committed to peace,” the Sri Lankan president said on Thursday.
