By Uditha Jayasinghe
GALLE, Sri Lanka, March 5 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka started to offload 208 crew members from a second Iranian vessel off its coast on Thursday, a day after 87 people were killed and several others were still missing after a U.S. submarine strike on an Iranian warship in the same region.
"After detailed discussions with all parties, Sri Lanka has decided to assist the Iranian vessel," Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a press briefing in Colombo.
The crew being offloaded included 53 officials, 84 cadets, 48 senior sailors and 23 sailors, Dissanayake said. Some crew members would remain on board to help the Sri Lankan Navy navigate the vessel to Trincomalee Port in the eastern part of the island, he added.
The ship was near the port of Colombo, in the country's exclusive economic zone but outside its maritime boundary, Dissanayake said.
"We worked on the stance that this is our humanitarian responsibility," he told the briefing.
RESCUERS STILL SEARCHING FOR 10 MISSING
The first ship, IRIS Dena, was sunk on Wednesday, 19 nautical miles off Sri Lanka's southern port city of Galle, and two freezers had been dispatched to store the 87 bodies recovered from the sea, he added.
Tehran has asked Colombo to help repatriate the bodies, Sri Lanka's deputy minister for health and mass media, Hansaka Wijemuni, told Reuters, adding that a timeframe had not yet been determined.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the warship was struck in international waters without warning, thousands of miles from the Gulf, where U.S. and Israeli forces are striking Iran and Tehran is retaliating with missile and drone attacks.
"The U.S. will bitterly regret the precedent it has set," Araqchi said in a post on X, adding that the warship was a guest of India's navy and was carrying almost 130 sailors.
IRIS Dena had taken part in a naval exercise organised by India in the Bay of Bengal from February 18 to 25 and was on its way back, according to the drill's website and Sri Lankan officials.
Sri Lankan military rescuers responded to an early-morning distress call from the frigate on Wednesday and found 32 survivors.
Search and rescue operations would continue for an estimated 10 people who remain unaccounted for, they said.
The Indian Navy said it had also launched a search and rescue operation to "augment" Sri Lanka's efforts.
The attack dramatically widened the scope of the war.
"An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters," U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon. "Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death."
A Pentagon video purporting to have captured the attack showed a huge explosion blowing apart the rear of the vessel, lifting it from the water, and causing it to begin sinking from the stern.
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe in Galle and Jana Choukeir and Elwely Elwelly in Dubai; Additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma in New Delhi; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar, YP Rajesh and Kanjyik Ghosh; Editing by Saad Sayeed, Philippa Fletcher, Andrew Heavens and Diane Craft)
