{"id":155137,"date":"2026-03-13T14:42:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T21:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=155137"},"modified":"2026-03-13T14:43:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T21:43:33","slug":"bodies-of-iranian-sailors-repatriated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/03\/13\/bodies-of-iranian-sailors-repatriated\/","title":{"rendered":"Bodies of Iranian sailors repatriated."},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Hiru News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>A special aircraft carrying the remains of 84 Iranian sailors who died aboard the &#8216;IRIS DENA&#8217; departed from Mattala International Airport for Iran this afternoon (13).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Deputy Minister of Defense Aruna Jayasekara stated that the Iranian warship sank in Sri Lankan waters following a strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The vessel was destroyed on March 4th in international waters, a few nautical miles off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, after being hit by a torpedo from an American submarine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before repatriation, the bodies were kept at the Galle Karapitiya Teaching Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the completion of legal proceedings, a court order recently authorised the release of the remains to the Iranian Embassy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Hiru News A special aircraft carrying the remains of 84 Iranian sailors who died aboard the &#8216;IRIS DENA&#8217; departed from Mattala International Airport for Iran this afternoon (13). Deputy Minister of Defense Aruna Jayasekara stated that the Iranian warship sank in Sri Lankan waters following a strike. The vessel was destroyed on March 4th [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155140,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155137\/revisions\/155140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}