Cairo (dpa) - US forces took control of a tanker that loaded crude oil at Libya‘s rebel-controlled eastern terminal of Sidra, the Department of Defence said on Monday. The tanker docked in Sidra earlier this month as separatists in Libya announced they will start exporting oil and ignored threats by the central government in Tripoli. "No one was hurt tonight when U.S. forces, at the request of both the Libyan and Cypriot governments, boarded and took control of the commercial tanker Morning Glory, a stateless vessel seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans," the Pentagon said in a statement. The Libyan government had said the tanker flew the North Korean flag. "The Morning Glory is carrying a cargo of oil owned by the Libyan government National Oil Company. The ship and its cargo were illicitly obtained from the Libyan port of As-Sidra," it added. The boarding took place Sunday in international waters southeast of Cyprus. The tanker will head to a port in Libya with a team of US sailors supervising the transit, according to the statement. The announcement by separatists sparked a crisis with Tripoli over Libya‘s eastern oil ports, controlled since July by rebels, prompting parliament to remove Premier Ali Zeidan from office through a no-confidence vote. Federalists, who independently announced an autonomy for the eastern region of Barqa, or Cyrenaica, in 2012, demand that oil revenues be kept within the region. Libya‘s oil exports, the mainstay of the North African country‘s economy, plummeted after rebels started blockading the eastern terminals in July. The country‘s interim government has been struggling to impose order since the fall of longtime leader Moamer Gaddafi in 2011. Government troops are outnumbered by various militia groups, who helped topple Gaddafi but have since defied the country‘s interim rulers.

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