Swedish authorities have seized a ship over the “aggravated sabotage” of an undersea fibre-optic cable linking Latvia with a strategically important island in Sweden.

The Nordic country has opened an investigation into the damage, just weeks after NATO stepped up its military presence in the area following a series of similar incidents.

Swedish authorities boarded a vessel suspected of being involved in an earlier underwater sabotage of cables in the Baltic Sea on Monday.

Swedish authorities have seized a ship suspected of damaging a data cable running under the Baltic Sea to Latvia. The Vezhen - a Maltese-flagged ship - is now anchored outside the Swedish port of Karlskrona.

The undersea cable is based in the Baltic Sea, and may have been deliberately damaged on Sunday, according to officials in Sweden.

A subsea data cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged early Sunday, sparking a criminal investigation, a third such incident in the Baltic Sea in the past three months.

Sweden detained a vessel suspected of damaging a subsea data cable connecting it with Latvia, the third such incident in the Baltic Sea in the past three months.

After a fiber optic cable was damaged near Sweden, Latvia sent a patrol boat to inspect a suspicious vessel in the Baltic Sea. Sweden later said it seized a vessel believed to have carried out the sabotage.

Sweden has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected aggravated “sabotage” and ordered the detention of a vessel in the Baltic Sea suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland earlier that day.

Latvia said it had dispatched a warship on Sunday after damage to a fibre optic cable to Sweden that may have been "due to external factors". The statement added: "Based on current findings, it is presumed that the cable is significantly damaged due to external factors.

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