North Korea fires another missile toward Japan
NORTH KOREA fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into waters off Japan last night and Hawaii, a US state, said it was reintroducing monthly testing of its Cold War-era nuclear warning sirens.
Kim Jong-un’s rogue regime launched the missile, its first for more than two months, in the middle of the night.
It flew for around 620 miles, reaching an altitude of 2,800 miles, and splashing down 50 minutes later in the Sea of Japan.
The office of Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, said it ended up within his country’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from its coast.
US President Donald Trump was briefed by officials while the missile was still in the air.
The test came just days after he had added North Korea to America’s list of state sponsors of terror, and unveiled new sanctions targeting its shipping, moves that Pyongyang had called a “serious provocation and violent infringement”.
It also came weeks after Mr Trump had returned from a tour of Asia where he had sought to rally support for clamping down on North Korea’s economy.
Hours before, officials in Hawaii had said that wailing sirens that were last heard more than 20 years ago would sound for some 60 seconds at more than 400 locations on the first working day of each month, starting in December.
In the event of a real attack, the sirens would give Hawaiians 12 to 15 minutes of warning before impact.
Richard Rapoza, Hawaii’s emergency management spokesman, said: “We stopped using them in the mid-nineties after the Cold War ended.”
The new siren tests were to be accompanied by public service announcements which would urge all residents to “get inside, stay inside and stay tuned”.