Azernews.Az

The United States Department of Defense announced in a statement on Sunday that overnight, it boarded Veronica III, a crude oil tanker, in the US Indo-Pacific Command, AzerNEWS reports.

"The vessel tried to defy [US] President [Donald] Trump's quarantine — hoping to slip away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down. No other nation has the reach, endurance, or will to do this," the department said.

“The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine —hoping to slip away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down,” the post continued.

Video featured in the post also appeared to show U.S. forces on board the tanker.

According to MarineTracker, a ship-tracking website, the Veronica III is a Panamanian crude oil tanker. The website also showed the ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean, south of Indonesia, at close to 8 a.m. EST Sunday. The Veronica III has previously been linked to Venezuela, according to The New York Times, which reported last month that it departed from the country’s main oil port.

Last week, the U.S. military intercepted a different oil tanker it claimed had been operating despite Trump’s quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Indian Ocean. The military had also chased after the ship from the Caribbean.

The U.S. has also seized multiple oil tankers in the Caribbean in the last few months amid tensions in the region, with American forces also recently capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and Trump pressuring Cuba to make a deal with the U.S.

“International waters are not sanctuary. By land, air, or sea, we will find you and deliver justice. The Department of War will deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of movement in the maritime domain,” the DOD said in their Sunday post.