A US submarine torpedoed and sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, killing at least 87 sailors and dramatically widening a regional conflict now in its fifth day, as fighting raged from the Gulf to Jerusalem and southern Lebanon.
Sri Lankan authorities said dozens of bodies had been recovered after the frigate IRIS Dena went down about 40 kilometres south of the port of Galle. Hospital officials in the southern city confirmed that 87 bodies were brought ashore, while 32 crew members were rescued and treated.
Around 60 to more than 100 sailors remain unaccounted for from an estimated 180 on board. “We have collected 87 bodies, and a search is still on for the others who are still missing,” a Sri Lankan navy official told AFP.
Another defence official said rescuers found only an oil slick when they reached the site. “We found people floating in the water and rescued them,” navy spokesman Commander Buddhika Sampath said.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the strike, declaring at the Pentagon: “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”
The Pentagon said it was the first time since World War II that a US submarine had sunk an enemy ship. General Dan Caine, America’s top military officer, said Washington had destroyed more than 20 Iranian navy vessels since the war began on Saturday.
Also, operatives from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence signalled openness to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to talks on ending the war, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing officials briefed on the matter.
The offer was made through an unnamed country’s spy agency, the NYT said, citing Middle Eastern officials and officials from a Western nation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The White House and the CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Officials in Washington are sceptical as to whether Iran or the Trump administration is really ready for an “off-ramp”, at least in the short term, the report added.
Strait of Hormuz
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday they had total control of the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global energy transit, as Israel launched a new wave of strikes on the Iranian capital.
In Lebanon, the Israeli military told residents south of the Litani River to move north, warning that the army was “compelled to take military action” against Hezbollah in the area.
Governments around the world scrambled to evacuate citizens stranded by the war in the Middle East, with Iran expanding a missile and drone barrage on the fifth day of a war that sent global shares sinking.
The war sparked by a US-Israeli attack that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has seen Iran lash out with missile and drone strikes from Israel across the Gulf, and has also drawn in Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Cities like Dubai and Riyadh, which have long taken pride in their safety from the tumult of the region, have been drawn in, with the growing chaos sparing few countries in Iran’s vicinity.
A ballistic missile launched from Iran, heading towards Turkish airspace through Iraq and Syria, has been destroyed by NATO air defence systems, Turkish officials said on Wednesday.
With energy prices already spiking, President Donald Trump had said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
Earlier, the Revolutionary Guards warned ships against entering the strait, and major shipping firms have already suspended transit through the waterway with maritime agencies reporting several ships attacked.
A ballistic missile launched from Iran and heading towards Turkish airspace via Iraq and Syria was destroyed by NATO air defence systems, Turkish officials said Wednesday.
The defence ministry said it had been “engaged and neutralised by NATO air-and-missile defence assets deployed in the eastern Mediterranean”.
It did not specify the missile’s intended target. Iran has been hitting sites across the region in retaliation after the US and Israel launched strikes against it on Saturday.
A Turkish official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the missile had been “aimed at a base in Greek Cyprus but veered off course”.
Officials said fragments that fell in the Dortyol district in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border, had been identified as pieces of the interceptor used to neutralise “the threat in the air”.
Qatar
Qatar’s prime minister condemned Iran’s attacks on Gulf states in a call with Tehran’s foreign minister Wednesday, the first high-level contact since the Islamic republic launched its missile and drone campaign.
Qatari premier Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani accused Iran of seeking to “harm its neighbours and drag them into a war that is not theirs”, on the call with Iran’s Abbas Araghchi, according to a statement by Qatar’s foreign ministry.
Gulf countries have borne much of Tehran’s response since the US and Israel launched a massive air campaign against Iran over the weekend with an 11-year-old girl killed in Kuwait on Wednesday by falling shrapnel.
Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in countries around the Gulf since the war began.
The Pentagon has announced the deaths of six US servicemen since Saturday, four of them in Kuwait.
The Qatari prime minister urged “an immediate halt to these attacks” on the call and said Iran had “struck civilian and residential areas” despite Araghchi’s assertion “the Iranian missile attacks were directed at US interests and did not target the State of Qatar”.
“These attacks cannot pass without a response,” Sheikh Mohammed added.
Kuwait’s health ministry said “resuscitation was performed in the ambulance while the girl was being transported to the hospital,” adding attempts continued for nearly half an hour at Al-Amiri Hospital but she “passed away due to her injuries”.
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar said they had intercepted Iranian drone and missile barrages, with the UAE reporting it engaged three ballistic missiles and intercepted 121 of 129 drones, while Qatar said it shot down 10 drones and two cruise missiles.
Israeli missions
Iran’s armed forces threatened on Wednesday to target Israeli missions worldwide if Israel were to attack Tehran’s mission in Lebanon, a military spokesman said.
Abolfazl Shekarchi, the spokesman of the Iranian armed forces, said live on television that “if Israel commits such a crime, it will force us to make all Israeli embassies around the world our legitimate target”.
On Tuesday, Avichay Adraee, an Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military, said it “warns representatives of the Iranian terror regime who are still in Lebanon to leave immediately before being targeted”, giving them 24 hours to leave.
