The United States said that one of its submarines had sunk an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka on Tuesday. The frigate, the IRIS Dena, was sunk by a torpedo, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Hegseth said that this was the “first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II”.
Sri Lanka on Wednesday rescued 32 “critically injured” sailors from the warship, the country’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said. At least 101 crew members are believed to be missing.
The IRIS Dena attended an International Fleet Review in India’s Vishakhapatnam from February 15 to February 25.
Commenting on the sinking of the warship, Congress leader Pawan Khera asked whether India had any influence left in its neighbourhood. “Or has that space also been quietly ceded to Washington and Tel Aviv?” he asked.
The US sunk the Iranian ship on the fifth day of a joint operation that it launched along with Israel against Tehran. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, although Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. Read more.
The Indian stock market continued to fall sharply amid concerns related to the conflict in West Asia, with the Sensex down by 1.4% and the Nifty registering a 1.5% drop. The rupee hit a low of 92.16 against the US dollar, falling by 67 paise, driven by rising Brent crude prices at $82.46 per barrel.
The Sensex ended the day at 79,116.19, while the Nifty50 was at 24,480 points at closing.
The India VIX index, which measures volatility in the market, had spiked above 23% at the close of trading.
The price of benchmark Brent crude had jumped by 1.29% to $82.46 per barrel on Wednesday. Read on.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that whoever is chosen to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader will be “an unequivocal target for elimination”. He added that Israel will “continue to act with full force, together with our American partners to crush the regime’s capabilities”.
The statement came after Khamenei was killed in a joint military operation by Israel and the United States on Saturday. After Khamenei’s killing, senior Iranian cleric Alireza Arafi was appointed to serve as a member of the leadership council that will oversee the process of selecting Iran’s next supreme leader. Read on.
National Confence MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi and former Srinagar Mayor Junaid Azim Mattu have been booked by the Jammu and Kashmir Police for sharing allegedly misleading content on social media. Mehdi and Mattu also said that their security has also been downgraded.
It was not clear what content the police were referring to. However, both the Srinagar MP and the former city mayor have been condemning the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran that began on Saturday.
Mehdi claimed that the case against him was filed because of his statements on the situation in West Asia.
The police said that the first information reports against the two were filed after “credible inputs” regarding the “circulation of false, fabricated and misleading content across digital and social media platforms…” Read more.
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