NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON: Sri Lanka will treat Iranian sailors rescued from a torpedoed frigate according to international law, a minister said on Saturday, following reports Washington was pressuring Colombo to not repatriate them.

Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told a conference in New Delhi that Sri Lanka was caring for 32 sailors from the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena under Colombo’s international treaty obligations.

The frigate was sunk by a US submarine on Wednesday just off Sri Lanka’s southern coast. Sri Lanka sent its navy to rescue survivors and recover 84 bodies.

Asked if Colombo was under pressure from the US to not repatriate the Iranians, Herath did not answer directly. “We have taken all the steps according to international laws,” Herath said.

US presses Colombo not to repatriate crew and survivors from sunken ship

Sri Lanka also provided safe haven to a second Iranian warship, the IRIS Bushehr, and evacuated its 219 crew a day after the Dena was torpedoed. The ship was taken to Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s northeast coast after reporting engine problems.

India, meanwhile, said on Saturday it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on “humane” grounds after it too reported operational problems.

The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last Saturday.

“I think it was the humane thing to do and I think we were guided by that principle,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishkar said. The Lavan docked in the southwest Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday.

“A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,” said Jaishkar.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said this week that Colombo would follow the Hague Convention, which requires a neutral state to hold combatants of a warring state until hostilities end.

A senior administration official said Colombo was in talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross to deal with the survivors of the torpedoed ship. International humanitarian law applied to the survivors from the Dena, an official said, and the wounded could be repatriated at their request.

Iranian diplomats in Colombo said they have asked for the remains of 84 sailors killed in the US attack to be taken back to Iran.

US cable

The torpedoing ​of the Dena — which US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described as “quiet death” — was the first such action by the United States since ​World War Two and a clear sign of the Iran conflict’s widening geographic scope. The internal State Department cable, which was dated March 6 and has not been previously reported, said Jayne Howell, the charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Colombo, had emphasised to Sri Lanka’s government that neither ​the Booshehr crew nor the 32 Dena survivors should be repatriated to Iran.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2026