A US submarine sank the IRIS Dena warship in the Indian Ocean about 19 nautical miles off Sri Lanka's southern port city of Galle on Wednesday, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington's pursuit of the Iranian navy. NDTV, Reuters reported.
On Thursday, Sri Lanka began offloading 208 crew members from a second Iranian ship, the naval auxiliary vessel IRIS Booshehr, which had found itself stranded in Sri Lanka's exclusive economic zone but outside its maritime boundary.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said his island nation had a "humanitarian responsibility" to take in the crew.
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.
It said, "Sri Lankan authorities should minimise Iranian attempts to use the detainees for propaganda."
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for Dissanayake's office and Sri Lanka's foreign ministry were not immediately available for comment.
