N. KOREA THREATENS TO STRIKE U.S.’ GUAM BASE
Trump warns of ‘fire and fury’, boasts of nuke arsenal
We are watching the increasing rhetorical escalation regarding the Korean Peninsula with concern... we call on all sides to use restraint — MARTIN SCHAEFER,
German foreign ministry spokesman
Seoul, Washington, Aug 9: North Korea on Wednesday said that it is considering strikes near US strategic military installations in Guam with its intermediate range ballistic missiles, state news agency KCNA reported.
The threat came hours after US President Donald Trump threatened Pyongyang with “fire and fury” over its missile programme and days after the UN Security Council levied new sanctions on North Korea over its growing nuclear arsenal.
Pyongyang said it’s “now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam with medium-tolong-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong12,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
The plan will be finalised “and will be put into practice in a multiconcurrent and consecutive way any moment once Kim Jong Un, supreme commander of the nuclear force of the DPRK, makes a decision,” it added.
The threat came after Mr Trump issued an apocalyptic warning, saying North Korea faces “fire and fury” over its missile programme, after US media reported Pyongyang has successfully miniaturised a nuclear warhead.
Later, he took to Twitter to issue another stark warning. “My first order as President was to renovate and modernise our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before,” he wrote. “Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!”
Mr Trump’s warning followed a Washington
Post report that quoted a defense intelligence agency analysis as saying officials think North Korea now has “nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery,” including in its intercontinental ballistic missiles.