COLOMBO, March 13 (Reuters) – The bodies of 84 Iranian sailors killed in a U.S. submarine attack on a warship off Sri Lanka’s coast last week will be repatriated, a source in the Iranian embassy in Colombo and Sri Lankan media reported on Friday.
Iranian warship IRIS Dena was struck by a torpedo from a U.S. submarine on March 4 while it was returning from a naval exercise in India amid the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which has wreaked havoc on markets and disrupted trade and travel across the world.
A Sri Lankan court ordered this week that the bodies of the sailors killed in the attack, stored in a morgue in the southern port city of Galle’s National Hospital, be handed over to the embassy of Iran.
The bodies will be repatriated on Friday by a special flight departing from Mattala International Airport, in the southern part of the Indian Ocean island nation, local media reported, citing the Sri Lankan defence ministry.
“Arrangements are being made to transport the bodies of the Iranian crew from the hospital to the Mattala airport,” a source in the Iranian embassy in Colombo told Reuters, without elaborating on when the flight would leave.
Reuters pictures showed a police vehicle leading large trucks carrying the bodies through a busy street.
240 IRANIAN CREW REMAIN IN SRI LANKA
Sri Lanka’s health, foreign, and defence ministries did not respond to calls from Reuters seeking comment. The Sri Lankan navy said it was not involved in the transport and repatriation efforts.
Sri Lanka has also granted 30-day entry visas to 208 crew members from a second Iranian ship, the IRIS Booshehr, who were taken in after the vessel experienced engine problems in the same region.
The country’s foreign ministry is in touch with the Iranian embassy in Colombo about the crew, which in turn is consulting Tehran, the defence ministry had said.
Reuters reported last week that Washington was pressing Colombo to not repatriate the survivors from the two vessels.
Thirty-two people had survived the attack on IRIS Dena.
Both Washington and Tehran are key trade partners for Sri Lanka, with the U.S. accounting for about 40% of its apparel exports while Iran is one of its main tea buyers.
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe, writing by Hritam Mukherjee and Sakshi Dayal; Editing by YP Rajesh)
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