US intercepts second merchant vessel off coast of Venezuela in international waters | US military
U.S. forces stopped a second merchant ship off the coast of Venezuela in international waters on Saturday, according to two U.S. officials, the Associated Press reported.
The move comes days after Donald Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving the South American country and follows US forces’ seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on December 10.
The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity, the AP said.
The development comes as Trump and his advisers have refused to rule out the possibility of open conflict with Venezuela as his country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, urged his navy to escort the tankers, defying the largest U.S. fleet deployed to the region in decades.
In an interview broadcast Friday morning, Trump told NBC News that a war against Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I’m not ruling it out, no,” he said in a telephone interview with the channel.
The United States further intensified its pressure on Venezuela this week, accusing the country of taking American oil and saying the United States had lost investments in the country. “You remember they took all our energy rights,” Trump said. “They took all of our oil not too long ago. And we want it back. They took it – they took it illegally.” On Tuesday, the US president ordered a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.
The US military carried out its latest deadly strike on a ship it accused of being involved in drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific on Thursday, killing four people and bringing the death toll to 99 in its campaign of strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats since September.
Maduro says the United States is seeking regime change instead of pursuing its stated goal of ending drug trafficking.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum waded into the conflict Wednesday, declaring that the United Nations was “nowhere to be found” and demanding that it intervene to “prevent further bloodshed.”
