A \u2060United States submarine has sunk an Iranian warship with a torpedo in international waters off Sri Lanka\u2019s coast, says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n
In a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, Hegseth said the strike on the Iranian warship was the \u201cfirst such attack on an enemy since World War II\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka\u2019s government said it recovered several bodies and rescued 32 wounded sailors after an Iranian military ship sank just outside the island\u2019s territorial waters.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s deputy \u2060foreign minister \u2060told local \u2060television that \u2060at least 80 \u2060people were killed \u2060in the strike.<\/p>\n
Authorities told Al Jazeera the frigate IRIS Dena, located about 40 nautical miles (75km) off Galle in southern Sri Lanka, sent out a distress call between 6am and 7am (00:30 to 01:30 GMT) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The ship had about 180 crew members on board, and a search and rescue operation was under way, Sri Lankan officials said.<\/p>\n
The Iranian frigate was returning from having taken part in the 2026 International Fleet Review last month in eastern India\u2019s coastal city of Vishakapatnam.<\/p>\n
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told parliament that the navy received information that the ship was in distress and the government sent ships and air force planes on a rescue mission.<\/p>\n
A Sri Lankan navy spokesperson said no other ship or aircraft was observed in the area where the Iranian warship sank.<\/p>\n
Reporting from outside a hospital in Galle, where the wounded crew members were taken, Al Jazeera said Sri Lankan officials were still trying to figure out what happened to the nearly 150 other crew members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A \u2060United States submarine has sunk an Iranian warship with a torpedo in international waters off Sri Lanka\u2019s coast, says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, Hegseth said the strike on the Iranian warship was the \u201cfirst such attack on an enemy since World War II\u201d. Sri Lanka\u2019s government said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-local","category-breaking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1595,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eelam24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}