Sri Lanka Denounces War Deaths, Houses Iran Sailors

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Sri Lanka denounced the toll of Middle East fighting yesterday as it gave refuge to more than 250 Iranian sailors two days after a deadly torpedo strike on another of Iran’s ships.

The crew from the second ship were brought ashore on Thursday and were being accommodated at a military camp near the capital Colombo. Their ship, IRIS Bushehr, was under Sri Lankan control.

The vessel reported engine trouble and sought port entry after another Iranian vessel, IRIS Dena, was hit by a US torpedo off Sri Lanka’s southern coast on Wednesday.

Washington said it had carried out that attack, which killed at least 84 Iranian sailors and left 64 more missing. Sri Lanka rescued 32 injured survivors.

“Our approach is that every life is as precious as our own,” Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake wrote on X yesterday, urging peace after the Israeli-US campaign led to Iranian retaliatory strikes.

Wednesday’s attack was the first military strike far outside the Middle East since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on Saturday.

US authorities said Wednesday’s strike was the first by a torpedo fired from an American submarine since World War II.

Sri Lanka gave permission to IRIS Bushehr to enter its territorial waters and also evacuated its 219 crew to the naval facility, while the 32 survivors from the first vessel are in hospital.

“All our actions are aimed at saving lives and ensuring that humanity prevails,” Dissanayake said.

He said in an earlier address to the nation that sheltering the sailors was the “most courageous and humanitarian course of action that a state can take”.

“We jealously guard our non-aligned policy while ensuring that humanitarian values and the saving of lives remain our top priority,” he said.

• ‘Ceremonial’ ship -

Sri Lanka has remained neutral in the conflict. The US is Sri Lanka’s largest export market, while Iran is a key buyer of tea, the island’s main export commodity.

Iran’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alireza Delkhosh, welcomed Dissanayake’s gesture.

In neighbouring India, visiting Iranian deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh slammed the US for attacking a “ceremonial, unloaded” ship.

Health authorities said autopsies on the 84 sailors killed in Wednesday’s attack had been completed, but the cause of death will be announced “in a few days”.

Survivors had helped identify 80 of them but the other four will require DNA testing, a medical officer at the hospital told AFP.

Sri Lankan navy spokesman Buddhika Sampath said the crippled Iranian vessel was in anchorage near Colombo and that engineering staff were trying to repair a faulty engine.

Sampath said a few Iranian sailors remained aboard to assist Sri Lankan sailors, but they would be taken off when the vessel is ready to move again.

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