US forces seize ship in Indian Ocean that fled Caribbean blockade
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The Pentagon said the US forces had seized the ship after announcing that that Aquila II was boarded without incident overnight.
PHOTO: DEPTOFWAR/X
WASHINGTON - US forces boarded and seized an oil tanker in the Indian Ocean that violated President Donald Trump’s blockade of sanctioned vessels
The Pentagon told AFP that US forces had seized the ship, after announcing on X that the Aquila II was boarded “without incident” overnight.
The tanker “was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean. It ran, and we followed,” the Pentagon said on X, adding that the vessel was “tracked and hunted” from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.
The post included a video of US forces boarding a helicopter and then roping down onto the deck of a tanker ship.
“Overnight, US military forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding on the Aquila II without incident “ US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on X.
Suezmax tanker Aquila II departed from Venezuelan waters in early January as part of a flotilla of vessels. It was carrying about 700,000 barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude bound for China, according to schedules from state company PDVSA. Most tankers in the flotilla have returned to Venezuela or have been seized by the US.
Mr Hegseth said the Aquila II was operating in defiance of the US “quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”
“The Department of War tracked and hunted this vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. ..You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us,” he wrote.
It was unclear where the Aquila II was registered, according to shipping databases.
The ship is the eighth seized by the United States since Mr Trump in December ordered a “blockade” of sanctioned oil vessels heading to and from Venezuela.
And it is the second to lead US forces on a chase outside the region, after a Russia-linked tanker was apprehended in the North Atlantic
Washington has deployed a huge naval force in the Caribbean, striking boats it says were used for drug trafficking, seizing tankers and carrying out a stunning operation to seize Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.
But the ships seized in recent months make up only a tiny fraction of the total number of sanctioned “dark fleet” vessels operating worldwide, which a senior US Coast Guard officer said number up to 800.
“It’s a very small percentage” of vessels that have been seized, Rear Admiral David Barata told a congressional hearing earlier in February. AFP, REUTERS
