Colombo: Has the Gulf crisis just got closer to Indian shores?
Sri Lanka, on Wednesday, rescued 30 sailors aboard the Iranian frigate IRIS that was sinking on Wednesday just outside the island’s territorial waters, foreign minister Vijitha Herath said.
Sri Lankan authorities received a distress call from the Iranian warship early on Wednesday and responded, Herath said. The frigate was supposed to have a 180-member crew. The fate of the others is not known.
It is also not known whether the ship sank after an attack by the US, which cl
aimed that it has crippled the Iranian Navy. Herath told parliament that the injured sailors were taken to a hospital in the island’s south.
The minister said that 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.
There was no immediate response from the government after an opposition legislator asked in Parliament whether the vessel had been bombed as part of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli attacks against Iran, as reported by The Hindu.
The operation was in line with Sri Lanka’s maritime obligations, Navy spokesman Buddhika Sampath said.
“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.
Local officials said the main hospital in Galle, 115 kilometres (70 miles) south of the capital, had been placed on alert to receive the evacuated sailors.