Iranian warship sinks after ‘submarine assault’ off Sri Lanka with 100 lacking and 78 wounded

At least 101 people were missing, and 78 were wounded after a submarine attack on an Iranian ship off Sri Lanka’s coast. 

Sri Lanka’s defence ministry said that it was searching for the other crew of the IRIS Dena, which went down about 25 miles south of the island. 

No information was immediately available on the cause of the explosion that sank the vessel, but Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vajitha Herath told parliament that the injured sailors were taken to a hospital in the island’s south.

The 180-crew frigate had issued a distress call at dawn.

‘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, but there was no immediate response from the government.

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.