Bodies of 84 Iranian sailors to be flown home from Sri Lanka along with crew stranded in India

The bodies of 84 Iranian sailors killed in a US submarine attack on a warship off Sri Lanka’s coast last week will be repatriated on a plane that an Indian source says will also stop in India to take home crew members from another ship.

Iranian warship IRIS Dena was sunk by a torpedo from a US submarine on March 4 while it was returning from a naval exercise in India amid the US-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 today by a special flight departing from Mattala International Airport in the southern part of the Indian Ocean island nation, Sri Lankan media reports, citing the Sri Lankan defense 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 tells 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 defense ministries do not respond to calls from Reuters seeking comment. The Sri Lankan navy says it is not involved in the transport and repatriation efforts.