US boards 3rd oil tanker in Indian Ocean

Washington: US military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

An organisation that tracks ship movements said the vessel was the only tanker left to pursue after more than a dozen fled the coast of Venezuela following the capture of the South American country’s authoritarian then-president, Nicolas Maduro.

US Southern Command said in a post on X that US forces boarded the Bertha overnight, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.” “The vessel was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade,” the post said. “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it.”

Video posted by the Pentagon shows US military helicopters flying toward the tanker.

Venezuela had faced US sanctions on its oil for several years.