North Korea also fired an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday, but the launch appears to have failed, the South Korean military said.
Source AFP
© STR / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP
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LNorth Korea launched three new missiles on Thursday, triggering an alert on an island off the Korean peninsula as well as in Japan, the day after an unprecedented salvo of fire that brought tension to a fever pitch in the region.
According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, three ballistic missiles, one long-range and two short-range, were launched Thursday morning from the North towards the Sea of Japan.
“The missile was detected as having the potential to fly over the Japanese archipelago and a (special) alert was issued, but after verifying this information, we confirmed that the missile did not cross the Japanese archipelago, but had disappeared over the Sea of Japan,” Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters.
“North Korea fired an additional unidentified ballistic missile towards the East Sea”, also known as the Sea of Japan, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
North Korea also fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Thursday, but the launch appears to have failed, the South Korean military said, a day after a record series of North Korean fires. “The launch of an ICBM by North Korea likely ended in failure,” Seoul’s military said.
The situation under tension
Early Thursday morning, a special alert system was activated and residents of Miyagi, Niigata and Yamagata areas in northern Japan received warnings to shelter in place or stay at home. The prime minister’s office initially said a missile flew over Japan around 7:48 a.m. (2248 GMT Wednesday), but the defense minister later clarified that the alert was issued in error.
“We are analyzing the reason” for his disappearance, he added. The alert in Japan led to a brief suspension of the country’s bullet train system in some areas.
The incident came after another missile fired by North Korea flew over Japan on October 4 and the day after a barrage of missiles and artillery by the communist regime in Pyongyang towards its neighbor, South Korea. South. “The continuous barrage of (North Korean) missiles day after day is an outrage and cannot be tolerated,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters on Thursday.