TRIPOLI: Libya’s coast guard said Thursday it had intercepted a Russian-flagged tanker suspected of carrying an illegal shipment of oil and detained 12 crew members from Russia.

“We received a signal on the presence of a ship transporting an illegal cargo of oil near Zuwara,” 160 km west of Tripoli, on Wednesday, Captain Taoufik Mohamad Assakir, operations chief for central Libya, told AFP.

The ship loaded with five million liters (one million gallons) of oil was boarded 14 nautical miles off Zuwara and diverted to the naval base in Tripoli, he said. The captain said its 12 Russian crew, including a woman, were detained.

In March 2014, the US Navy intercepted and boarded the North Korean tanker “Morning Glory” loaded with an illegal oil shipment in the eastern Mediterranean and escorted it back to Libya, although it later escaped back to sea.

Libya has been plunged into insecurity and chaos since dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster in a 2011 revolution, torn between an administration in Tripoli and the internationally recognized government in the oil-rich country’s far east.

The rival governments claim to be the legitimate authority for the state-run National Oil Corporation, though international oil traders have mostly avoided breaking with current contracts with the NOC based in Tripoli.

The Tripoli authority controls vessels monitoring most of the country’s Mediterranean coast except for sections of the far east.