Sri Lanka To Repatriate Remains Of 84 Iranians Killed In US Attack

COLUMBO: Sri Lanka will on Friday repatriate the remains of 84 Iranian sailors killed when their frigate was sunk by a US submarine nine days ago, the State Department said.

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

“All domestic procedures have been completed and the Iranians are bringing a chartered plane for repatriation,” spokeswoman Suchhara Rodrigo told AFP.

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

The mummified remains will be shipped out of Sri Lanka in sealed boxes from Mattala International Airport in the south of the country, officials said.

The first group of 46 bodies was already at the airport on Friday afternoon, waiting for a chartered Iranian cargo plane, an official told AFP.

The bodies recovered from the Indian Ocean were taken to Karapitiya Hospital in Galle, 115 kilometers south of the capital, where autopsies were performed.

A local judge ordered the bodies to be handed over to the Iranian embassy in Colombo and returned to next of kin.

The Iranian embassy contacted by AFP had no comment.