Sri Lanka's navy rescued 32 sailors from the frigate IRIS Dena but hopes were fading for 148 other sailors, the island's Foreign minister and defence officials said.
The source was unclear of the reported explosion involving the frigate, which was travelling after reportedly attending a military exercise in India's eastern port of Viskhapatnam.
This sinking comes as war has broken out in the Mideast, after Israel and the United States launched strikes against Iran.
Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told parliament that 32 rescued Iranians were rushed to the main hospital in the island's south while two navy craft and a plane were deployed to search for survivours.
The frigate issued a distress call at dawn on Wednesday and within less than an hour a rescue vessel reached the area about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the southern port of Galle, the minister said.
The frigate had completely sunk and only an oil patch remained when the navy rescue boats approached.
"We are keeping up a search, but we don't know yet what happened to the rest of the crew," a defence official told AFP, dimming prospects for finding any more survivors.
The director at the Karapitiya hospital in Galle, S. D. Ranga, said he was told there may be fatalities, but only 32 injured sailors had been brought in.
- A 'few bodies' -
An opposition legislator asked in parliament whether the vessel had been bombed as part of the ongoing US-Israeli attacks against Iran, but there was no immediate response from the government.
The Iranian Ambassador in Colombo, Alireza Delkhosh, was not immediately available for comment.
Navy spokesman Buddhika Sampath said their operation was in line with Sri Lanka's maritime obligations.
"We responded to the distress call under our international obligations, as this is within our search and rescue area in the Indian Ocean," Sampath told AFP.
"We have found a few bodies from the area where the ship had gone down," Sampath.
Sri Lanka has remained neutral and repeatedly urged dialogue to resolve the conflict in the Mideast.
Just over a million Sri Lankans are employed in the Middle East and they are a key source of foreign exchange for the country emerging from its worst economic meltdown in 2022.
Both Sri Lanka's navy and the air force said they were not releasing footage of the rescue because it involved the military of another state.
Police stepped up security outside the Galle hospital as the wounded Iranians were brought there by the local navy.
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