Colombo: The 22 Iranian sailors who were rescued by Sri Lankan navy after their warship IRIS Dena was sunk by an American submarine on March 4, have been discharged from the hospital, officials said on Sunday.
The crew members, who were lifted from life rafts on Indian Ocean, were undergoing treatment at Karapitiya Hospital in the port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.
With the war between US-Israel and Iran raging since February 28, it was the first military strike outside the Gulf region in Middle East.
The sailors who were discharged overnight were taken to a beach resort as Sri Lankan navy ended its search on Sunday for survivors from IRIS Dena, with just over 60 people not traced.
Ten people are still undergoing treatment, a medical officer told AFP.
The bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also at the hospital.
Sri Lankan authorities said the IRIS Dena survivors were being treated according to international humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross had been contacted for assistance.
Sri Lanka denied claims that there was pressure from the US to prevent the rescued Iranians from returning home.
Sri Lanka has also provided refuge for 219 more Iranian sailors from a second ship, IRIS Bushehr, which was allowed to enter the island’s waters after the IRIS Dena was destroyed when it was on way back to Iran after participating in the multinational naval exercise MILAN 2026 in Visakhapatnam.
IRIS Bushehr crew have been moved to a Sri Lanka Navy camp at Welisara, near Colombo, and their vessel taken over by the navy.
India on Saturday said it had allowed a third Iranian warship, IRIS Lavan, to dock in Kochi on “humane” grounds after it reported engine problems.
“I think it was the humane thing to do, and I think we were guided by that principle,” India’s minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar said.
