Sri Lanka has denounced the toll of the Middle East fighting, as the nation opened its arms to over 200 Iranian sailors who sought help after a deadly torpedo strike on another of Iran’s ships, AFP reports.

The crew were brought ashore yesterday and were being accommodated at a military camp near the capital Colombo and their ship, IRIS Bushehr, was under Sri Lankan control.

“Our approach is that every life is as precious as our own,” Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake wrote on X, and urged peace after the Israeli-US campaign led to Iranian retaliatory strikes.