IRANIAN Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has vowed that the United States will ‘bitterly regret’ sinking Iran’s Frigate Dena in international waters that led to the killing of dozens of sailors.
The attack occurred thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean – off the southern coast of Sri Lanka – away from the Persian Gulf, where a US-Israeli military coalition has been striking Iran in an unprovoked war of aggression since Saturday.
‘The US has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran’s shores. Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning. Mark my words, the US will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set,’ Araghchi said on Thursday.
Frigate IRIS Dena was torpedoed and was sunk by a US submarine on Wednesday. According to Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister, it was heading back to Iran from an eastern Indian port.
‘An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,’ said US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, adding: ‘Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo.’
According to hospital authorities in the Sri Lankan port city of Galle, a total of 87 bodies were brought in by military rescuers who responded to an early morning distress call.
Sri Lankan authorities noted that another 32 sailors were rescued and were being treated at a hospital.
However, they said that around 60 sailors were likely unaccounted for, from an estimated 180 people on board.
Frigate IRIS Dena had taken part in a naval exercise organised by India in the Bay of Bengal from February 18th to 25th.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that its naval forces struck a US oil tanker in the northern Persian Gulf earlier on Thursday, setting it ablaze.
In response to the US-Israeli aggression against Iran, the naval and aerospace units of the IRGC and the Islamic Republic’s national military forces have launched massive missile strikes against US military assets in regional countries, and on targets in the Israeli-occupied territories since the weekend.
Iran’s escalating strikes have prompted Washington to close its embassies, urging Americans to flee the region.
- The air at the bombed-out Tehran hospital room hung thick with dust and the metallic tang of recent destruction carried out by the United States and the Israeli regime.
Against a backdrop of shattered concrete, two newborns clung precariously to life. Their breaths were being measured by the rhythmic beep of monitors connected by vital wires.
Amid the dust-choked room following the dastardly US-Israeli aggression, Iranian Red Crescent personnel worked to sever the fragile connection to the damaged infrastructure, to take the infants out of the wreckage.
The Gandhi Hospital in central Tehran, along with a nearby residential building, sustained catastrophic damage from strikes carried out by the United States and Israel late on Sunday night, a day after the aggression was launched without provocation.
Immediately following the attack, harrowing footage depicted medical personnel urgently transferring the tiny newborns from their compromised incubators to ambulances.
The tragedy deepened with confirmation from hospital authorities later about the massive damage incurred by a specialised IVF centre there, which lay in ruins.
The IVF centre was a sanctuary where hundreds of hopeful couples had invested their futures, their deepest desires for parenthood.
The US-Israeli aggression destroyed their dreams for future generations that had been painstakingly planned.
Hossein Kermanpour, Health Ministry spokesman, said: ‘For the first time in my life, I am witnessing something I never even saw during the Iran-Iraq War: Patients being carried in their caregivers’ arms, fleeing into smoke-filled streets after missiles exploded beside their hospital.’
