A total 87 bodies were recovered and 32 people rescued after a torpedo fired by a U.S. submarine sunk an Iranian warship off the Sri Lanka Coast on Wednesday (March 4) as part of Operation Epic Fury, according to the Associated Press.
The incident was one of the few instances in which a submarine sunk a ship since World War II. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the vessel a “prize ship” while discussing the incident, which fell in line with President Donald Trump‘s mission to wipe out the Iranian Navy.
“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon news briefing via the Associated Press. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo.”
A rescue mission involving ships and planes was launched after Sri Lanka’s navy received a distress signal from the IRIS Dena, which had 180 people on board at the time, foreign minister Vijitha Herath told Parliament. Navy spokesman Commander Buddhika Sampath said there was no sign of the ship, “only some oil patches and life rafts,” when Sri Lanka’s navy arrived at the scene.
“We found people floating on the water,” Sampath said.
A video shared by the U.S. Department of Defense showed the exact moment the torpedo struck the ship, which appeared to be struck by an underwater explosion causing it to break apart and resulting in a large plume of water rising up in the air. The 32 people rescued were taken to a hospital in the town of Galle, located on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, and the recovered bodies were also brought to land, according to Sampath.
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