Sri Lanka will repatriate bodies of Iranian sailors

Sri Lanka will repatriate the bodies of the Iranian sailors who were killed on IRIS Dena, the first Iranian ship that was torpedoed by the US, the deputy Defence Minister said on Saturday.

Sri Lanka said on Wednesday it had recovered 84 bodies of Iranian sailors after the US submarine attack sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Galle on the island’s southern coast. The ship had been returning to Iran from Visakhapatnam, India, where it had participated in a naval fleet review exercise.

“The bodies are kept under refrigeration and action will be taken to send them back to Iran,” Minister Aruna Jayasekera told reporters answering a query here on Saturday. The Government maintains that the situation has not improved yet to try sending them by air or by sea.

The magisterial inquiry and the post-mortem on 84 bodies were concluded in the southern port town of Galle on March 5.

Eighty of the 84 were identified by the survivors.