Sharjah 24 – AFP: North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles on Friday, the South's military said, the latest in a blitz of launches that Washington and Seoul have warned could culminate in another nuclear test.
The launch comes as the South wraps up 12 days of amphibious naval military exercises, involving key security ally America, and ahead of the Monday start of major combined air drills that will involve more than 200 US and South Korean fighter jets.
Such exercises infuriate Pyongyang, which sees them as rehearsals for invasion and has repeatedly justified its blitz of missile launches as necessary "countermeasures" to what it deems US aggression.
South Korea's military said it had "detected two ballistic missiles fired from the Tongchon area in Kangwon between 1159 (0259 GMT) and 1218," it said, referring to a province on North Korea's east coast.
"Our military has increased monitoring and surveillance and is maintaining a full readiness posture in close coordination with the US," Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The missiles flew approximately 230 kilometres (143 miles) at an altitude of 24 kilometres and speeds of Mach 5, the statement said, calling the launch "a serious provocation" that violated UN sanctions.
The US military's Indo-Pacific Command also condemned the launch, saying it highlighted "the destabilising impact" of North Korea's banned weapons programmes.
With talks long-stalled, tensions on the peninsula are at their highest point in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month declaring his country an "irreversible" nuclear power, effectively ending negotiations over his banned weapons programmes.
Officials in Washington and Seoul have been warning for months that Kim is ready to conduct another nuclear test, which would be the country's seventh -- and the first since 2017.
On Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said it appeared Pyongyang had "already completed preparations for a seventh nuclear test", he told parliament.
On Wednesday, the United States, Japan and South Korea vowed such a test would warrant an "unprecedentedly strong response".
North Korea has this month fired multiple artillery barrages into a maritime "buffer zone" that was set up in 2018 as a way of reducing tensions with the South during a period of ill-fated diplomacy.
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