The Panama-flagged vessel was intercepted as part of Washington’s effort to redirect sanctioned Venezuelan oil flows to new buyers
US military forces intercepted and boarded a tanker that was sanctioned for carrying Venezuelan oil in the Indian Ocean overnight on Sunday, the Pentagon has announced.
The US launched a military operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, and claims to have seized control of the country’s oil exports. Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump said Washington plans to “control Venezuela’s oil resources indefinitely.”
In a statement on X, the US War Department said the vessel, named Veronica III, was tracked from the Caribbean Sea into the Indian Ocean before being stopped and inspected in what it described as a “right‑of‑visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”
“The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine – hoping to slip away,” the Pentagon wrote. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.”
Ship-tracking and maritime data platforms list the Veronica III as a Panama-flagged oil tanker. The action follows a similar boarding last week of another sanctioned vessel.
Trump ordered what he described as a “total and complete blockade” on all US‑sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela in December.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: rt.com
