N Korea mocks Trump, hones Guam strike plans
‘WEEK AWAY FROM FINAL PLAN’ May fire ICBMs into waters near US territory
North Korea on Thursday announced a detailed plan to launch a volley of ballistic missiles toward the US territory of Guam, a major military hub and home to US bombers, and dismissed President Donald Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” if it doesn’t back down.
The announcement, made in the name of a general who heads North Korea’s rocket command, warned the North is preparing a plan to fire four of its Hwasong-12 missiles over Japan and into waters around the tiny island, which hosts 7,000 US military personnel on two main bases and has a population of 160,000.
It said the plan could be finalised within a week or so and would then go to leader Kim Jong Un for approval. It would be up to Kim whether the move is actually carried out. It said the missiles would hit waters 30 to 40 kilometres away from the island.
It is unclear whether North Korea would risk firing missiles so close to US territory, which could provoke countermeasures and further escalation.
Washington, meanwhile, has been giving out mixed signals of what its intensions might be.
While Trump was threatening annihilation and boasting that he has made the US nuclear arsenal “far stronger and more powerful than ever before,” his secretary of state Rex Tillerson sought to calm the sense of crisis.
“Americans should sleep well at night,” Tillerson told reporters. “Nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours.”
But then defence secretary Jim Mattis ratcheted the rhetoric back up, calling on Pyongyang to “cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”
North Korea immediately called Trump’s rhetoric a “load of nonsense” that was aggravating a grave situation.