This screen grab from a video posted on the X account of US Southern Command on January 15, 2026, shows what the US military says is an action to apprehend the tanker Veronica in the Carribean Sea. Photo: AFP / US Southern Command
The United States announced on Thursday (local time) that its forces have seized another tanker in the Caribbean, the sixth ship apprehended since President Donald Trump announced a blockade to prevent sanctioned vessels going to or from Venezuela.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for Washington's forces in the region, said in a social media post that Marines and sailors seized the Veronica without incident in a pre-dawn raid, and included a video showing US forces roping down onto a vessel's deck.
"The only oil leaving Venezuela will be oil that is coordinated properly and lawfully," SOUTHCOM said.
Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem meanwhile said on social media that a Coast Guard tactical team boarded the ship, which she described as "another sanctioned ghost fleet tanker".
The ship, which has been under US sanctions since 2022, "had previously passed through Venezuelan waters, and was operating in defiance of President Trump's established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean", Noem added.
Among the six ships seized since the US president announced the blockade in December was a Russia-linked tanker apprehended in the North Atlantic last week after being pursued by the United States from off the coast of Venezuela.
That ship had recently changed its name and switched its registration to Russia.
-AFP
