Sri Lanka to send home 84 Iranian sailors killed at sea

Sri Lanka is repatriating the remains of 84 Iranian sailors killed when their frigate was sunk nine days ago by a US submarine.

The seamen were killed when IRIS Dena was torpedoed on March 4 just off the coast of Sri Lanka, in a move that extended the Middle East war to the Indian Ocean, AFP reports.

“All domestic procedures have been completed, and the Iranians are bringing a chartered aircraft for the repatriation,” spokesman Thushara Rodrigo told AFP.

“The 32 sailors who were rescued by our navy will remain in Sri Lanka.”

The embalmed remains, in sealed boxes, are to be flown out of Sri Lanka from the Mattala International Airport in the south of the country, officials said.

The first batch of 46 bodies was already at the airport by March 13 afternoon awaiting an Iranian chartered cargo plane, an official said.

The bodies, which were plucked from the Indian Ocean, were taken to the Karapitiya Hospital in Galle, 115 kilometres (72 miles) south of the capital, where autopsies were carried out.

A local magistrate ordered that the bodies be handed over to the Iranian embassy in Colombo to be sent back to the next of kin.

By Vafa Guliyeva