North Korea Test Fires 4 Strategic Crusie Missiles Days After Launching Ballistic Missile
North Korea test fired four strategic cruise missiles just days after launching a ballistic missile towards the East Sea.
New Delhi: Just days after launching a suspected ballistic missile towards the East Sea, North Korea test-fired four strategic cruise missiles, its state media said on Friday as reported by Reuters.
The missiles were fired during a drill designed to demonstrate its ability to conduct a nuclear counterattack against hostile forces, Reuters added in its report.
“The exercise on Thursday involved an apparently operational strategic cruise missile unit of the Korean People's Army, which fired the four "Hwasal-2" missiles in the area of Kim Chaek City, North Hamgyong Province, towards the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula,” state news agency KCNA was quoted as saying by Reuters.
It added that other units conducted firepower training at hardened sites without live firing.
The report said that the four strategic cruise missiles travelled "2,000km-long elliptical and eight-shaped flight orbits for 10,208 seconds to 10,224 seconds" and hit a preset target.
The drill demonstrated "the war posture of the DPRK nuclear combat force bolstering up in every way its deadly nuclear counterattack capability against the hostile forces," KCNA said, using the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Reuters mentioned in the report.
Notably, the missile launches were not announced by South Korea or Japan, which are often the first to detect and publicly report such launches.
However, South Korea's defence ministry said that it monitored the launch but there were "differences" between what it and the United States detected and the North's statement.
The launch comes at a time when US and South Korean officials took part in a tabletop, or simulated, exercise that focused on the possibility of North Korea using a nuclear weapon, the report added.
Earlier on Feb 20, North Korea launched an unspecified ballistic missile, the South Korean military said. This was North Korea’s second missile launch in less than 48 hours and a day after joint US-South Korean drills, as reported by the news agency AFP. "North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile toward the East Sea on Monday," Seoul's Joint Chief of Staff said, according to the official Yonhap news agency, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan.
"North Korea has launched a suspected ballistic missile," the office of Japan's prime minister tweeted on Monday morning. The Japanese Coastguard said soon after that the projectile "appears to have already fallen," without providing further details, AFP reported. The United States and South Korea on Sunday conducted joint air drills in response to a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch a day earlier. The drills featured a strategic bomber and stealth fighter jets.
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