North Korea missile lands close to South Korean waters for the first time

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2 years ago

November 2, 2022

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North Korea fired at least 17 missiles off its eastern and western coasts on Wednesday morning, according to South Korea’s military, with one landing near the rivals’ tense sea border.

Seoul quickly responded by launching its own missiles.

It was the most missiles fired by the North in a single day – and the first time a ballistic missile had landed near the South’s waters since the countries’ division in 1948.

“This is very unprecedented and we will never tolerate it,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The missile landed outside South Korea’s territorial waters, but south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed inter-Korean maritime border.

It landed around 35 miles from the South Korean city of Sokcho, on the east coast, and 100 miles from the island of Ulleung, where air raid warnings were issued.

“We heard the siren at around 8.55am and all of us in the building went down to the evacuation place in the basement,” an Ulleung county official said.

“We stayed there until we came upstairs at around 9.15am after hearing that the projectile fell into the high seas.”

Yoon Suk-yeol, the South Korean president, said it was an “effective act of territorial encroachment”.

South Korean warplanes fired three air-to-ground missiles into the sea across the NLL after Mr Yoon’s office pledged a “swift and firm response” so Pyongyang “pays the price for provocation”.

South Korea is in a period of national mourning after more than 150 people were killed in a deadly crowd crush in the capital, Seoul.

Hours before the missiles were launched, the North threatened to use nuclear weapons to get the US and South Korea to “pay the most horrible price in history” in protest over the two nations’ ongoing military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

Washington said the drills were “purely defensive in nature” and that the US had made clear to North Korea that it harboured no hostile intent towards the country.

Missile launches signal a gradual but steady escalation

Today’s ballistic missile launches mark another step on what feels like an incremental but steady increase of tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

Not only was this the closest a North Korean missile has come to the South Korean shore since the countries’ division in 1948, but it also comes shortly after its longest known missile flight yet over Japan in early October.

This year, in fact, has already seen the most missile testing events of any year since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011.

It all signals a gradual but steady escalation.

It’s entirely possible that these incremental steps will ultimately lead to North Korea undertaking a full nuclear weapon test. If it does, it’s unclear how South Korea and its ally the US won’t be pulled into some form of retaliation – South Korea has already said there would be an “unparalleled response” to such a move.

And rhetoric is being significantly ramped up on both sides.

A recently released Pentagon National Defence Strategy report stated that any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies would “result in the end of that regime”.

The North Koreans have said that any perceived attack would result in its enemies paying “the most horrible price in history”. They certainly see joint military drills between South Korea and the US as highly provocative.

Years of sanctions and diplomatic pressure have not deterred North Korea from developing a nuclear weapons programme. Deterrent in the form of hardened language and shows of military strength may be one of the few tactics remaining.

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Pictures show moment Israeli bomb exploded at Beirut apartment block

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2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Pictures show moment Israeli bomb exploded at Beirut apartment block

New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.

The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.

Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.

Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.

“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.

Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up

Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.

Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.

The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.

Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.

Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.

More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.

About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.

Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.

Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.

On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.

The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.

World

Elon Musk hints 80-hour-a-week DOGE job for ‘high-IQ revolutionaries’ will be unpaid

Published

7 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Elon Musk hints 80-hour-a-week DOGE job for 'high-IQ revolutionaries' will be unpaid

“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.

The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.

The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.

“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.

“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.

“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”

In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.

“What a great deal!”

When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.

Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

Published

7 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.

A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.

They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.