COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka has sent home 238 Iranian sailors, including 32 who survived a U.S. torpedo attack that sank their ship in the Indian Ocean, officials said Friday. The repatriation closes one chapter of a wreckage trail left by military power, with the sailors and the dead paying the price for decisions made far above them.
A U.S. submarine sank the IRIS Dena on March 4 while the ship was returning home after taking part in a naval exercise on invitation from India. The Sri Lankan navy recovered 87 bodies and 32 were hospitalized. Those numbers sit at the center of the story: bodies pulled from the water, survivors sent to hospitals, and a state-to-state military incident that left ordinary crew members to absorb the damage.
Who Paid the Price
Among the 238 sailors sent home were 32 who survived the torpedo attack. The article does not soften the human cost. The ship was sunk in the Indian Ocean, and the Sri Lankan navy recovered 87 bodies. Thirty-two were hospitalized. The rest of the crew was left to be handled by governments, ports and military authorities after the fact.
A second Iranian ship was brought to a southern Sri Lankan port after its crew reported technical problems. Defense Ministry spokesman Brig. Franklin Joseph said Friday that everyone except for a few crew members from the second ship had been repatriated earlier this week. The Iranian ship has been anchored in the eastern port of Trincomalee port and no decision has been taken on what should be done with it.
That is the bureaucratic language of maritime control: ships anchored, crews processed, decisions deferred. The people aboard are moved around by institutions that speak in the calm voice of procedure while the consequences remain anything but calm.
The State Calls It Balance
H.M.G.S. Palihakkara, a retired former foreign secretary who also served as Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said, “I think it (Sri Lanka) has proven its policy posture not only in words but also in deeds.” He said the island nation ensured that it was not seen to be taking sides but acted on the basis of legality, humanity and international law.
He said, “All parties to the conflict have acknowledged that. It has enhanced Sri Lanka’s government’s credibility.” The language is tidy, but it describes a government trying to keep itself positioned between larger powers while sailors, bodies and damaged ships are left in the middle of the mess.
Palihakkara said Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made a difficult decision when he declined two requests on the same day — one from the U.S. to land military aircraft in Sri Lanka and another from Iran to bring its warships ashore. The refusals show a state trying to manage pressure from competing powers without openly siding with either one.
Trade, Crisis and the Machinery Above
Sri Lanka is emerging from an economic crisis and both the U.S and Iran are its crucial trading partners. The U.S played an important role in assisting with an International Monetary Fund bailout deal and helping the agricultural sector to avert a food crisis.
That detail matters because it shows how economic dependence and military power sit in the same frame. The island nation is navigating a crisis while balancing trade ties, bailout politics and military requests from states that can exert pressure in different ways.
The article does not describe any grassroots response or mutual aid network around the sailors, only the actions of governments, defense officials and diplomats. What it does show is a chain of command stretching from a U.S. submarine to Sri Lankan ports, hospitals and ministries, with the sailors themselves reduced to cargo in a geopolitical dispute.
Sri Lanka’s decision to send home 238 Iranian sailors, including survivors of the U.S. torpedo attack, ends the immediate detention and port-side limbo for most of the crew. But the wreckage remains visible in the numbers: 87 bodies recovered, 32 hospitalized, and a ship sunk on March 4 by a U.S. submarine while returning from a naval exercise.