North Korea fires intercontinental ballistic missile, lands near Japan

 
INA-sources
 
North Korea fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday that landed just 200 kilometres (130 miles) off Japan and had sufficient range to reach the mainland of the United States, Japanese officials told reporters.
 
The launch, reported by both South Korean and Japanese officials, comes a day after a smaller missile launch by the North and its warning of "fiercer military responses" to the U.S. boosting its regional security presence.
 
This has become a record-breaking year for the nuclear-armed country's missile programme, after it resumed testing ICBMs for the first time since 2017 and broke its self-imposed moratorium on long-range launches as denuclearisation talks stalled.
 
Japanese Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters the latest missile was capable of flying as far as 15,000 km, while Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said it flew to an altitude of about 6,000 km with a range of 1,000 km, before landing in the sea roughly 200 kilometres west of Oshima-Oshima Island in Hokkaido.
 
Source: Reuters