The Sri Lankan Navy continues efforts to locate Lieutenant Thilina Udayapriya, who went missing when the Super Dvora Mark III Fast Attack Craft sank off the Colombo coast on August 15. Eleven of the twelve crew members were rescued.
The Sri Lankan Navy has not yet recovered the body of Lieutenant Thilina Udayapriya, the second-in-command of the Super Dvora Mark III Fast Attack Craft that sank during a monsoon storm on August 15 in waters off Angulana. Navy officials confirmed on August 26 that search operations remain ongoing despite challenging weather and rough sea conditions in the area.
Eleven members of the twelve-person crew were rescued following the incident. The sunken vessel, which was delivered to Sri Lanka from Israel following the conclusion of the conflict, has now drifted to waters off Bambalapitiya. Concurrent with the search for the missing officer, the Navy is also attempting to salvage the damaged craft from the seafloor.
According to available information, the Super Dvora collided with the wreck of the MV Thermopylae Sierra, a merchant vessel that sank in August 2012 during a previous monsoon storm. Although the location of the sunken cargo ship was marked on nautical charts available to the Fast Attack Craft's crew, authorities had not deployed a warning buoy at the site despite earlier public requests to do so. This absence of surface marking may have contributed to the collision that resulted in the sinking.
