Sri Lanka to repatriate bodies of Iranian sailors killed in US strike

Sri Lanka will repatriate the bodies of the Iranian sailors who were killed on IRIS Dena, the first Iranian ship that was torpedoed by the US, the Deputy Defence Minister said on Saturday.

Sri Lanka said on Wednesday it had recovered 84 bodies of Iranian sailors after the US submarine attack sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Galle on the island's southern coast.

The ship had been returning to Iran from Visakhapatnam, India, where it had participatedin a naval fleet review exercise.

"The bodies are kept under refrigeration and action will be taken to send them back to Iran," Minister Aruna Jayasekera told reporters answering a query here on Saturday.

 

The government maintains that the situation has not improvedyet to try sending them by air or by sea.

The magisterial inquiry and the post-mortem on 84 bodies were concluded in the southern port town of Galle on March 5. Eighty of the 84 were identified by the survivors.

The government announced on Saturday that at the Food Policy and Security Committee meeting, attention was given to the potential impact on the supply of essential commodities and food security from the war situation.

It was decided to maintain strategic stockpiles of essential food items.

Speaking in the north central town of Anuradhapura, the Food Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe said, "Until theend of April, we are assured of continued fuel supplies".

He saidthatcertain food items ofIranian origin might be replaced by those from Thailand.

"We have no big issues with food supplies. Our exports will get impacted, and we are in the process of taking action to overcome them," Samarasinghe said.