BLAST IN PAK TRIBAL BELT LEAVES 14 DEAD
carried out separate joint exercises with Japanese and South Korean vessels.
President Donald Trump has said the US was sending an “armada” to the Korean peninsula, including submarines.
According to the US Navy’s Submarine Force Pacific website, the USS Michigan carries more than 150 Tomahawk cruise missiles. They are capable of precision strikes against the North’s nuclear facilities, but the South Korean Navy called the visit “routine” and said the submarine would not take part in any joint exercises.
North Korea has ambitions to build a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the US mainland. Tensions have soared in recent months as it carried out a string of missile tests that sparked tit-for-tat sabre-rattling between it and Washington.
Pyongyang’s rhetoric always intensifies in the spring, when Seoul and Washington hold joint military drills which it sees as rehearsals for an invasion.
The North’s Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, warned Tuesday of dire consequences for a US-led pre-emptive strike.
A roadside bomb targeting a minivan in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region on Tuesday killed 14 people, a local official said. The attack was claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction.
The blast ripped through the van travelling through a minority Shia region of the Kurram tribal area, which borders Afghanistan, said Arif Khan, a tribal administration official in the town of Parachinar.
The area has long been the scene of sectarian violence.
Five women and four children were among the 14 killed, while 10 people were wounded in the explosion.
With few adequate medical facilities in the area, a Pakistani army helicopter evacuated the wounded to a nearby military hospital.
Jamat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway Taliban faction, said it was behind the attack on the Shias.
Pakistani Taliban and other Sunni militant groups often target minority Shiites whom they consider to be heretics.