US submarine captain gave Iran crew two warnings to desert ship earlier than killing at the least 87 when he torpedoed it

The US submarine captain who sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka warned the crew twice before firing torpedoes, it has been claimed.

At least 87 sailors have been confirmed dead and a further 78 wounded after an ‘explosion’ hit the 180-crew frigate IRIS Dena, around 25 miles south of the Indian Ocean island on Wednesday.

According to Iranian reports, one of the crew members rang his father claiming that the US warnings to abandon the ship were ignored by the commander on the Iranian warship.

Some of the crew are understood to have escaped on lifeboats, and a rescue mission was launched Sri Lankan navy dispatched a team when the vessel issued a distress call at dawn.  

In total, 87 bodies were retrieved from the Indian Ocean and 32 sailors were rescued.

Iran‘s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as an ‘atrocity at sea’ and said the US would ‘bitterly regret’ the attack. 

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told parliament that the injured sailors were taken to a hospital in the island’s south. 

He told a conference in New Delhi that Sri Lanka was caring for the rescued sailors from the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena under Colombo’s international treaty obligations.

Asked if Colombo was under pressure from the US to not repatriate the Iranians, Mr Herath did not answer directly. 

‘We have taken all the steps according to international laws,’ Mr Herath said.

Sri Lanka also provided safe haven to a second Iranian warship, the IRIS Bushehr, and evacuated its 219 crew a day after the Dena was torpedoed.

The ship was taken to Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s northeast coast after reporting engine problems.

India, meanwhile, said Saturday it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on ‘humane’ grounds after it too reported operational problems.

The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last Saturday.

‘I think it was the humane thing to do and I think we were guided by that principle,’ Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishkar said.

‘A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,’ said Mr Jaishkar.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said this week that Colombo would follow the Hague Convention, which requires a neutral state to hold combatants of a warring state until hostilities end.

A senior administration official said Colombo was in talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross to deal with the survivors of the torpedoed ship.

International humanitarian law applied to the survivors from the Dena, an official said, and the wounded could be repatriated at their request.

Iranian diplomats in Colombo said they have asked for the remains of 84 sailors killed in the US attack to be taken back to Iran. 

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday: ‘Yesterday, in the Indian Ocean, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters.

‘Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo – a quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War Two.’

He said of the wider operation: ‘We are only four days into this, and the results have been incredible. 

‘The combination [with Israel‘s forces] is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries. They are toast, and they know it. And we have only just begun.’

‘We are keeping up a search, but we don’t know yet what happened to the rest of the crew,’ an official told AFP, dimming prospects for finding any more survivors.

Herath said two Sri Lankan navy vessels and an aircraft were deployed for the rescue operation, but did not say what caused the Iranian warship to sink.

An opposition legislator asked in parliament whether the vessel had been bombed as part of the ongoing US-Israeli attacks against Iran. Still, there was no immediate response from the government.

But a Sri Lankan military source told Reuters that the ship was attacked by a submarine, which caused an explosion. The source did not say whose submarine was used in the attack.

Navy spokesman Buddhika Sampath said their operation was in line with Sri Lanka’s maritime obligations and that 32 Iranian sailors were evacuated to the main hospital in Galle, 70 miles south of the capital Colombo.

‘We responded to the distress call under our international obligations, as this is within our search and rescue area in the Indian Ocean,’ Sampath told AFP.

Both Sri Lanka’s navy and air force said they would not release footage of the rescue because it involved the military of another state.

Police stepped up security outside the Galle hospital as the wounded Iranians were brought there by the local navy.

It comes after the US military said it had struck Iran’s largest naval warship following the launch of Trump’s ‘Operation Epic Fury.’

US Central Command also rebuked Iranian leadership for falsely claiming it had sunk an American aircraft carrier in the Gulf. 

‘The Iranian regime’s false messaging machine continues to falsely claim that it has sunk a US aircraft carrier. The only carrier that has been hit is the Shahid Bagheri, an Iranian drone carrier,’ the US Central Command said.

‘US forces struck the ship within hours of launching Operation Epic Fury.’

Tehran reportedly used the IRIS Shahid Bagheri as a launching pad for drone attacks against US military base and Gulf allies following the death of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.