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 on a plane that an Indian source said will also stop in India to take home crew members from another ship.
Iranian warship IRIS Dena was sunk 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.
Two other ships that also participated in the exercises sought shelter: the IRIS Lavan, which docked in India, and the IRIS Booshehr which docked in Sri Lanka.
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, Sri Lankan 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.
The bodies were later driven by truck through the city, escorted by a police vehicle.
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.
PLANE TO PICK UP CREW FROM SHIP IN INDIA
An Indian official said that after the plane departs Sri Lanka carrying the bodies, India would allow it to land in India to pick up some of the 183 sailors from the IRIS Lavan, as well as some Iranian tourists stranded in India.
India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The source said it was not clear when the plane would land in India or take off.
Thirty-two survivors of the sunken ship are in Sri Lanka, as well as 208 crew members from the IRIS Booshehr.
The Sri Lankan 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.
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe in Colombo, and Krishn N. Das and Saurabh Sharma in New Delhi, additional reporting by Bipasha DeyWriting by Hritam Mukherjee and Sakshi DayalEditing by YP Rajesh and Peter Graff)
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