Over 200 sailors from an Iranian vessel were rescued by Sri Lanka after the ship’s engine failed, just one day after another Iranian warship was sunk by a torpedo.
The Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the country took control of the IRIS Bushehr after it sought assistance while anchored outside the country’s waters.
Navy spokesman Cmdr Buddhika Sampath said the sailors of the IRIS Bushehr were being brought first to the port of Colombo, with the ship later being moved to an eastern port on the island.
‘The disembarkation is in progress,’ he said, adding the sailors would be taken to the naval base at Welisara, about 12 miles north of Colombo, after medical examinations and immigration procedures.
The IRIS Bushehr had been described in previous Iranian media reports as a navy logistics ship that also had a helicopter pad on it.
The move by the Sri Lankan government to take over the vessel came after the US sank the Iranian warship IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka’s coast on Wednesday.
Footage showed a huge explosion beneath her stern, followed by haunting images of it sinking, after a torpedo launched from an American submarine struck it.
The Indian navy said it had initiated search and rescue operations after receiving a distress signal from the Dena, deploying two aircraft along with a sailing training vessel.
By the time the response was launched, the Sri Lankan navy had already started its own rescue efforts, it said.
The Sri Lankan navy rescued 32 sailors and recovered 87 bodies after the attack.
The strike marked one of the rare instances since the Second World War in which a submarine sank a surface warship, highlighting the expanding scope of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran.
The Dena had participated in naval exercises hosted by India before heading into international waters on its way home.
At least 74 countries had joined the events, according to India’s defence ministry, including the US navy, which conducted reconnaissance aircraft and maritime patrol drills.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the Dena had been carrying ‘almost 130’ crew. The normal crew size for a warship of that class is 140.
Araghchi called the sinking an ‘atrocity at sea’ and said the US would ‘bitterly regret’ the attack.
Sri Lankan president Dissanayake told journalists on Thursday night: ‘We have to understand that this is not an ordinary situation. It’s a request by a ship belonging to one party to enter into our port. We have to consider that according to the international treaties and conventions.’
Separately on Friday, he wrote on X: ‘No civilian should die in wars. Our approach is that every single life is as precious as our own.’
Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Vijitha Herath also took to X, saying he had spoken to Araghchi and ‘expressed grave concern over the escalation of hostilities.’
Iran has strong economic and political ties with Sri Lanka, with the South Asian country buying $250 million in crude oil shipments from Iran.
Herath said that ties with Iran had ‘broadened significantly’ under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes on Saturday. Sri Lanka, however, remains neutral in the current conflict.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, former Royal Navy chief Lord West said the ship’s sinking transformed what had been a regional conflict into a ‘global war’.
‘It makes the situation rather tricky, as some will say this was outside the Area of Operations,’ West said.
‘While it is a horrible event, it is acceptable as the US is at war with Iran. Nobody declares war these days but that’s where we’re at.
‘This is now a global war. There would be nothing wrong with Iran attacking US targets anywhere. The toys have been thrown out of the cot. We are fighting a war.’
Sri Lanka is one of the latest countries to be dragged into the expanding conflict, as the war in the Middle East rages on.
Iran continued its attack on the Gulf overnight after the Islamic Republic vowed the US would ‘bitterly regret’ torpedoing its warship.
On Friday, Iran fired missile and drone attacks into Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, all countries that host US forces. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Qatar’s Defence Ministry reported it intercepted a drone attack targeting Al Udeid Air Base, which hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command.
A spokesperson for Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defence said it had intercepted and destroyed three ballistic missiles fired early on Friday toward Prince Sultan Air Base south of Riyadh, which hosts U.S. forces.
Air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, where the Interior Ministry said Iranian strikes targeted two hotels and a residential building. It said there were no casualties.
In Lebanon, where the war has intensified fighting between Israel and Iran-allied Hezbollah militants, Israel launched a series of airstrikes late on Thursday and into Friday in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other areas.
Speaking at a press conference in Tampa, the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth warned that strikes on Iran will ‘surge dramatically’, saying:
‘We have only just begun to fight and fight decisively. If you think you’ve seen something, just wait.’
He added: ‘Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation. Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.’
‘The amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically.’
The US military said early on Friday that it struck an Iranian drone carrier, setting it ablaze.
The US military’s Central Command released black-and-white footage of the burning carrier. The Iranian military did not immediately acknowledge the attack.
The drone carrier, the IRIS Shahid Bagheri, is a converted container ship with a 180 metre runway for drones.
The vessel can travel up to 22,000 nautical miles without needing to refuel in ports, reports said at the time of its 2005 inauguration.
The conflict has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 120 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six US troops have been killed.
