US warplanes fly off N. Korea

WASHINGTON: US bombers and fighter escorts flew off the coast of North Korea Saturday in a show of force, escalating already sky-high tensions.

The hermit state’s foreign minister meanwhile derided Donald Trump as “mentally deranged” at the UN, while the US president fired back on Twitter.

The latest exchange of bellicose rhetoric comes as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang’s weapons ambitions – including a suggestion this week that the country is considering detonating an H-bomb over the Pacific.

US bombers have carried out similar flights before, but in a new stage for such show-of-force operations, the Pentagon stressed this was the furthest north of the Demilitarised Zone between the two Koreas that any US fighter or bomber has flown off the North’s coast in this century.

The Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flown Saturday are based in Guam, and were accompanied by F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Japan, the Pentagon said.

There was another reason for concern after an underground rumble near North Korea’s nuclear test site. China at first said it suspected an explosion but it was later ruled to be a shallow 3.5-magnitude earthquake and likely an aftershock from the North’s latest nuclear test on Sept 3.

Last week, Trump used his maiden speech at the UN General Assembly to warn the US would “totally destroy” the North if it threatened the US or its allies.

Pyongyang responded on Friday with a rare personal rebuke from Kim, who called Trump “mentally deranged”.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho took things further. He, too, dismissed Trump as deranged, and said Trump’s threats had increased the chances of military confrontation. – AFP