Sri Lanka is set to repatriate the remains of 84 Iranian sailors killed after their frigate was sunk by a United States submarine near its coast, the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
The sailors died when the Iranian Navy frigate, IRIS Dena, was torpedoed on March 4 just off the coast of Sri Lanka, in an incident that has extended tensions linked to the Middle East conflict into the Indian Ocean.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Thushara Rodrigo said all domestic procedures had been completed for the repatriation of the bodies.
According to him, Iranian authorities arranged a chartered aircraft to transport the remains back to Iran.
“The 32 sailors who were rescued by our navy will remain in Sri Lanka,” Rodrigo said.
Officials said the embalmed remains, placed in sealed boxes, would be flown out from Mattala International Airport in southern Sri Lanka.
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A first batch of 46 bodies had already been moved to the airport by Friday afternoon while awaiting the arrival of the Iranian chartered cargo plane.
The bodies, recovered from the Indian Ocean, were initially taken to Karapitiya Hospital in Galle, about 115 kilometres south of the capital, Colombo, where autopsies were conducted.
A local magistrate later ordered that the remains be handed over to the Iranian embassy in Colombo for repatriation to their families.
The Iranian embassy in Colombo had not issued an official comment on the development as of the time of filing this report.