N Korea vows to boost weapons programmes after sanctions

SEOUL : North Korea vowed on Wednesday to accelerate its weapons programmes in response to “evil” sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council following its latest and most powerful nuclear test.

The respected 38 North website in the US raised its estimate for the yield from the explosion, which Pyongyang says was a hydrogen bomb small enough to fit onto a missile, to around 250 kilotons -- more than 16 times the size of the device that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.

The UN Security Council unanimously imposed an eighth set of sanctions on the North on Monday, banning it from trading in textiles and restricting its oil imports, which US President Donald Trump said was a prelude to stronger measures.

The resolution, passed after the US toned down its original proposals to secure backing from China and Russia, came just one month after the council banned exports of coal, lead and seafood in response to the ICBM launch.

The North’s foreign ministry condemned the new measures “in the strongest terms”, calling them a “full-scale economic blockade” driven by the US and aimed at “suffocating” its state and people.

It was “another illegal and evil ‘resolution on sanctions’ piloted by the US”, it said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

“The DPRK will redouble the efforts to increase its strength to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and right to existence,” the ministry said.

But the South’s unification ministry described the statement as “the most low-key form of response from North Korea to UN Security Council resolutions”.

SOUTH DETECTS RADIOACTIVE GAS FROM TEST South Korea said on Wednesday traces of radioactive xenon gas were confirmed to be from the North Korean nuclear test , but was unable to conclude whether the test had been for a hydrogen bomb as Pyongyang claimed.

The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said its landbased xenon detector in the northeastern part of the country found traces of xenon-133 isotope on nine occasions, while its mobile equipment off the country’s east coast detected traces of the isotope four TIMES.AGENCIES