Thousands of miles from Iran's capital, Tehran, the war in the Middle East reached Sri Lanka's southern coast Wednesday.
Fishing boats and tourist traffic usually define daily life in the historic city of Galle, but on Thursday survivors of the Iranian warship sunk by a U.S. submarine were being treated there after a dramatic sea rescue.
The city's hospital is just 2 miles from the office of Dr. Chathura Welivitiya, chairman of a local aid organization.
“People are scared,” Welivitiya told NBC News in messages sent via WhatsApp. “People are now in disbelief.”
The frigate IRIS Dena was torpedoed just 19 nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, killing 87 sailors. The Sri Lankan navy rescued 32 people, who were treated at the Galle hospital. Dozens more remain missing.
Welivitiya said that many Sri Lankans were “concerned about the broader implications of escalating conflicts in the Middle East and how global geopolitical tensions can indirectly affect smaller island nations like ours.”
The war, which began Saturday morning when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, has already drawn in dozens of nations.
In its retaliatory attacks, Iran has struck its U.S.-allied neighbors in the region, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The war has also drawn in European powers, after a drone strike Sunday hit a British military base on Cyprus, a European Union member state off the coast of Turkey.
After the Sun newspaper published a photograph showing a hole in the side of an airplane hangar, the British Defense Ministry said the strike on the RAF Akrotiri base, which is classed as a British Overseas Territory, caused "no casualties and thorough assessments determine that the damage is minimal."
The Spanish Defense Ministry said Thursday it would deploy a frigate to defend Cyprus. Italy and France also confirmed they would deploy defensive forces to the region, while Britain said it plans to deploy a warship next week.
Olivia O’Sullivan, the U.K. director in the World Program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, said the risk of further escalation would pose a challenge for America’s historical allies in Europe.
“American presidents have acted unilaterally in the past, so it’s not a totally new dilemma,” she told NBC News, but President Donald Trump "has really accelerated that tendency, and it’s forcing European allies to re-examine, when and how do we support the U.S. actions in the world.”
Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani Foreign Affairs Ministry said Thursday it had lodged an official protest with the Iranian Embassy after four people were injured in drone incidents.
Azerbaijan has said one of the drones hit the terminal building of an airport, while the other fell close to a school in a nearby village in the Nakhchivan enclave.
The Iranian armed forces denied that carrying out drone strikes on Azerbaijan, saying in a statement that the Islamic Republic "respects the sovereignty of all countries."
"The Iranians only really have one punch left to throw," Col. Steve Warren, an NBC News military analyst and former Pentagon spokesperson, told NBC's "TODAY" show.
"They want to bring these other nations into the conflict, in the hopes that these nations will then pressure the United States to stop our action," he said.
The conflict also threatens to have a major economic impact across the globe.
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that sits along the southern coast of Iran, gives passage to one-fifth of the world’s oil supply and is also a key route for other types of commodities such as aluminum, sugar and fertilizer.
Normally jammed with oil tankers and cargo ships, it has been nearly emptied by Iran's threat to attack vessels, sending oil and gas prices surging.
Few places reveal the global reach of the conflict more starkly than Sri Lanka, thousands of miles from the Middle East but deeply connected through shipping routes, energy markets and migrant labor ties.
“One of the main concerns is economic vulnerability,” Welivitiya added. “Disruptions to global shipping routes and energy supplies can have direct consequences for our economy, particularly given Sri Lanka’s recent economic challenges.”
Officials in Sri Lanka caution that the IRIS Dena rescue might not be a one-off event, after saying a second Iranian ship has entered Sri Lankan territorial waters.
Sri Lanka is not allowing the ship to dock but is providing some humanitarian assistance, Cabinet spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa said Wednesday, without specifying if the ship was a commercial or naval vessel.
“We are doing our utmost to safeguard lives,” Jayatissa said.
Kasun Jayawardana, a tour guide in Galle, said residents were unsettled to see the aftermath of a war arrive on their coastline in a country still marked by decades of its own conflict.
After nearly 30 years of civil war in Sri Lanka, which ended in 2009, Jayawardana told NBC News, the town had little appetite for seeing violence return, even indirectly.
“We all hate war,” he said.
