World
N. Korea fires 23 missiles, one landing off South Korean coast for first time
North Korea fired at least 23 missiles into the sea on Wednesday, including one that landed less than 60 km (40 miles) off South Korea’s coast, which South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol described as “territorial encroachment” and Washington denounced as “reckless”, Reuters reported.
It was the first time a ballistic missile had landed near the South’s waters since the peninsula was divided in 1945, and the most missiles fired by the North in a single day. South Korea issued rare air raid warnings and launched its own missiles in response.
According to Reuters the launches came just hours after Pyongyang demanded that the United States and South Korea stop large-scale military exercises, saying such “military rashness and provocation can be no longer tolerated”.
In Washington, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby called the North Korean launches “reckless” and said the United States would make sure it had the military capabilities in place to defend its treaty allies South Korea and Japan.
The missile landed outside South Korea’s territorial waters, but south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed inter-Korean maritime border.
South Korean warplanes fired three air-to-ground missiles into the sea north across the NLL in response, the South’s military said. An official said the weapons used included an AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER, which is a U.S.-made “stand-off” precision attack weapon that can fly for up to 270 km (170 miles) with a 360-kg (800-lb) warhead, read the report.
The South’s launches came after Yoon’s office vowed a “swift and firm response”.
“President Yoon Suk-yeol noted North Korea’s provocation today was an effective act of territorial encroachment by a missile intruding the NLL for the first time since (the two Koreas’) division,” his office said.
When asked whether the missile was flying towards the South’s territory and should have been intercepted, a senior presidential official said, “Strictly speaking, it did not land in our territory but in the Exclusive Economic Zone under our jurisdiction, therefore it was not subject to interception”.
According to Reuters North Korea has continuously been launching missiles over the past year in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
“It’s unprecedented in the sense that there were so many,” she said of Wednesday’s launches.
Kirby told his news briefing that the United States has information that indicates North Korea is covertly supplying Russia with a “significant” number of artillery shells for its war in Ukraine and that Washington would consult with the United Nations on accountability issues over the shipments.
Kirby said North Korea was attempting to obscure the shipments by funnelling them through countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
North Korea said in September it had never supplied weapons or ammunition to Russia and has no plans to do so, Reuters reported.
The missile that crossed the NLL was one of three short-range ballistic missiles fired from the North Korean coastal area of Wonsan into the sea, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. The JCS later said as many as 14 other missiles of various types had been fired from North Korea’s east and west coasts.
The JCS said at least one landed 26 km south of the NLL, 57 km from the South Korean city of Sokcho, on the east coast, and 167 km from the island of Ulleung, where air raid warnings were sounded.
“We heard the siren at around 8:55 a.m. and all of us in the building went down to the evacuation place in the basement,” an Ulleung county official told Reuters. “We stayed there until we came upstairs at around 9:15 after hearing that the projectile fell into the high seas.”
The North also fired more than 100 rounds of artillery from its east coast into a military buffer zone, South Korea’s military said. The firing violated a 2018 military agreement banning hostile acts in border areas, the JCS said.
North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, read the report.
Nuclear-armed North Korea has tested a record number of missiles this year, and officials in Seoul and Washington say the North has completed technical preparations to conduct a nuclear weapon test for the first time since 2017.
Despite Yoon’s declaring a national week of mourning after more than 150 people were killed in a weekend crowd surge in Seoul, the United States and South Korea began one of their largest combined military air drills on Monday. Dubbed Vigilant Storm, the exercises involve hundreds of warplanes from both sides staging mock attacks 24 hours a day.
North Korea, which for years has pursued missile and nuclear programmes in defiance of U.N. sanctions, had said that a recent flurry of launches were in response to allied drills, Reuters reported.
Pak Jong Chon, secretary of the Central Committee of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, said in a statement on Wednesday that the number of warplanes involved in Vigilant Storm proved the exercise was “aggressive and provocative” and specifically targeted North Korea. He said even its name imitated the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in the 1990s.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that the drills were purely defensive and harboured no hostile intent. Price added that Washington and its allies had also made clear that there would be “profound costs and profound consequences” if North Korea resumed nuclear testing. He did not elaborate.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a regular briefing in Beijing that safeguarding peace and stability on the peninsula was in everyone’s interest.
“We hope that all parties concerned will stick to the direction of political settlement of the Peninsula issue, meet each other halfway, and prevent the situation from escalating,” he said.
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that because of the launches, some air routes over the sea between North Korea and Japan would be closed until Thursday.
World
Lebanon says Israeli strikes in south of the country kill at least 11
Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement that the attacks would be “met with what they deserve”.
At least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said, some of the deadliest in the weeks since the country agreed to a U.S.-mediated peace framework with neighbouring Israel, Reuters reported.
The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah infrastructure overnight in what it describes as a security zone in southern Lebanon in response to actions against its soldiers there.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement that the attacks would be “met with what they deserve”.
The framework leaves Israeli troops inside occupied southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed and the Lebanese army takes control, terms the group has rejected as surrender.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said seven people were killed when Israeli warplanes struck a house in the southern village of Ansar, while four others were killed in a strike on the village of Deir El Zahrani.
The seven people killed in Ansar included three children and two women, NNA said, adding that a total of 19 people were wounded in the attacks.
At least 4,300 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest round of hostilities since March 2.
NNA also reported other airstrikes across southern Lebanon, including on a strategic area north of the Litani River known as Ali al-Taher hill. One, targeting a valley next to Ansar, was the deepest strike into Lebanon in two months.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement on X, accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire and attacking Israeli soldiers leading to three injuries, read the report.
“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) responded by striking the Hezbollah terror headquarters which ordered the attack,” the statement said. “Only later did the IDF learn that Hezbollah deliberately put civilians in that military compound.”
The Israeli military said in a statement it killed Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force unit and others when it struck “a central headquarters of the Radwan Force unit,” in Ansar.
“At the time of the strike, Hassan’s family was also present with him inside the military headquarters and, according to the claim, was harmed in the strike,” the statement added, emphasising that the family was not the target of the strike.
“The martyrs of the Israeli raid on the village of Ansar are not ‘military infrastructure’ and the women and children killed in it are not military targets,” Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a post on X.
Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, who is a Hezbollah ally, called in a statement for national unity and for the sponsors of the peace talks and ceasefire agreements to assume responsibility for stopping the war before it was too late.
Israel’s military seized a swathe of southern Lebanon during its war with Hezbollah earlier this year, triggered after the group fired at Israel two days into the Iran war. Israel has said it will keep its forces there to protect the north of the country from further attacks.
During a visit to southern Lebanon on Thursday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would not withdraw from areas under its control until Hezbollah was disarmed. A U.S. State Department official said a permanent Israeli military presence there was not consistent with commitments set out in the deal, Reuters reported.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in a statement on X, said the attacks were a “clear message” aimed at the negotiations and U.S. efforts towards implementing the framework agreement.
Doron Spielman, international spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, told Reuters Saturday’s strikes would “tighten up” negotiations.
“I think it should make the negotiations more serious and more real, because it highlights the whole reason we got into these negotiations in the first place,” he added.
World
At least 38 dead after Indonesia’s magnitude-7.7 earthquake, officials say
At least 38 people died after an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 and dozens of aftershocks struck off eastern Indonesia on Saturday, officials said, as rescue workers rushed to reach areas closest to the epicentre.
Tsunami waves of less than 1 metre (3 feet) were recorded in several areas of the Southeast Asian nation after the early morning tremor. The tsunami warning was lifted about three hours after the quake, Reuters reported.
“As of 15:00 (0800 GMT), the recorded figures are 38 fatalities, two people seriously injured, 11 with minor injuries,” Suharyanto, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, or BNPB, told a televised press conference. He added that approximately 2,000 people had fled to safer ground.
Earlier, rescuers in the port town of Maumere found 20 dead, six injured and two trapped under the rubble, said Fathur Rahman, head of the city’s rescue agency. Maumere is the main town in Sikka Regency on Flores Island in the east of Indonesia’s vast archipelago.
Suharyanto said residents remain trapped in several buildings in earthquake-affected areas and there are reports of landslides blocking several roads.
TEAMS HAVE YET TO REACH REGION CLOSEST TO EPICENTRE
Teams have yet to reach Nagekeo, the region closest to the epicentre, and communications signals there had been affected, Fathur told Reuters. Attempts to reach Nagekeo by car were blocked by landslides, while another team was attempting to go by ferry, he said.
About 2,000 residents in Nagekeo evacuated, and damage was reported to a number of houses, warehouses and government facilities, the BNPB said. Authorities also reported traffic congestion and power outages affecting parts of the regency, it said.
The governor of East Nusa Tenggara Province, Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena, told a press conference at least five people died from collapsing rubble as they slept.
Parts of a building collapsed into dust and rubble as people screamed and ran in the street, a video on Facebook, verified by Reuters as being at a port in Maumere, showed.
“The quake was massive, the shock was so strong, we were resting at home with family,” said Nona, a 51-year-old resident of Talibura, a village in East Nusa Tenggara. “There were 13 of us inside the house and we all ran to save ourselves.”
Strong shaking was felt across East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and parts of South Sulawesi, and residents in several areas reported shaking lasting about one minute, the BNPB said in a statement.
“Most of the people felt the shock and scattered out of their homes,” it said.
A hospital in the district of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara Province was moving patients outside, Kompas TV footage showed, and Kompas.com reported at least one landslide.
Indonesian geophysics agency BMKG recorded the first quake at 4.58 a.m. (2158 GMT) at a depth of 15 km (9 miles), followed by several aftershocks.
In 1992 the same area was hit by a magnitude-7.5 quake, causing extensive destruction at that time, the agency said.
Australia’s tsunami warning centre said the undersea earthquake would pose “no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, islands or territories”.
Indonesia straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet, creating a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.
World
Five killed in Michigan shooting; suspect found dead after manhunt
Police did not release the names, ages, or genders of the victims, saying next-of-kin notifications were underway.
A man suspected of shooting and killing five people in northern Michigan on Friday was found dead after a manhunt, Michigan State Police said in a statement on social media.
One victim remained hospitalized in critical condition, the police said.
Troopers were dispatched around 11:40 a.m. local time (6:40 p.m. Israel time) to a home in Missaukee County, Michigan, after a report of a shooting. Officers found three people dead and a fourth person wounded, the state police said.
The suspect, identified by police as 39-year-old Chad Hickman, fled the scene before troopers arrived, prompting a manhunt. During the search for the suspect, investigators discovered another deceased victim at a second residence.
Troopers later located Hickman’s vehicle near a wooded area close to Whitlock Lake, where they found Hickman and another person dead, police said.
“This situation is heartbreaking for the community and challenging for the investigators involved,” said Lieutenant Ashley Miller, cited in the police statement.
Police did not release the names, ages, or genders of the victims, saying next-of-kin notifications were underway.
-
Latest News4 days agoHesabPay unveils new visa card and digital payment app in Kabul
-
International Sports4 days agoAFC Champions League Elite draw nears as Al-Nassr seeded above Al-Hilal
-
Sport5 days agoAfghanistan to host India for three-match T20I series in Delhi
-
Latest News4 days agoAfghan envoy invites Fazlur Rehman to embassy event marking IEA’s return to power
-
Sport5 days agoAfghanistan face Ireland with series win in sight
-
World5 days agoUS military operations killed 153 civilians in 2025, Pentagon assessment shows
-
Sport5 days agoKabul Premier League: Abasin Defenders thrash Band-e Amir Stars by 163 runs
-
Regional4 days agoIran says no progress on reviving interim peace deal with US
