Feb. 24 (UPI) — The U.S. military seized a third oil tanker moving from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The Bertha, a ship flying the Cook Islands flag, was intercepted overnight in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command region after the Defense Department said it attempted to evade U.S. forces.
“International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned actors. By land, air, or sea, our forces will find you and deliver justice,” the Department of Defense said in a post on X. “The Department of War will deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
The department alleges that the ship was “operating in defiance of President [Donald] Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”
The Cook Islands is a nation of 15 islands located in the South Pacific.
Two more oil tankers were seized in the Indian Ocean by the United States earlier this month.
On Feb. 9, the military pursued an oil tanker from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean without incident.
On Feb. 14, another oil tanker was captured. The Veronica III was the ninth oil tanker the United States had intercepted or seized that was linked to Venezuela since Dec. 10.
The United States has enforced a blockade on oil tankers from Venezuela since Dec. 10. The initial operation was meant to pressure President Nicolas Maduro to step down. In January, the U.S. military captured and detained Maduro and his wife.
