DHAKA: All 10 US Navy sailors detained by Iran after drifting into its territorial waters a day earlier have been freed.

The US and Iran said on Wednesday, reports the BBC.

The US Navy said the American crew returned safely and there were no indications that they had been harmed while in custody.

The nine men and one woman were being held at an Iranian base on Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf after being detained nearby on Tuesday. The tiny outpost has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats as far back as the 1980s.

The sailors left the island at 8:43am GMT aboard the boats that they were detained with, the Navy said. They were picked up by Navy aircraft and other sailors took control of their boats for the return to Bahrain, where the US 5th Fleet is based.

‘The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors’ presence in Iran,’ the US statement said.

The Revolutionary Guard’s official website published images of the detained sailors before their release showing them sitting on the floor of a room.

‘After determining that their entry into Iran’s territorial waters was not intentional and their apology, the detained American sailors were released in international waters of the Persian Gulf,’ a statement posted online by the Guard said on Wednesday.

General Ali Fadavi, the navy chief of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, was quoted earlier on Wednesday by Iranian state TV as saying that an investigation had shown that the Americans entered Iranian territorial waters because of ‘mechanical problems in their navigation system’.

The foreign ministers of both countries, John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif, had been in constant contact, Iranian media said.

BDST: 2047 HRS, JAN 13, 2016
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** Iran detains 10 US sailors in Gulf