US Air Force bombers and fighter jets flew over international waters yesterday off the east coast of North Korea in a “demonstration of US resolve” in the face of Pyongyang’s provocations, the Pentagon said.
Meanwhile, a top North Korean official told the UN General Assembly that Pyongyang will take “merciless preventive action” if the United States shows any sign of “decapitating” the regime.
The US military’s Pacific Command described the bomber mission as the furthest north of the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone flown by US strike aircraft in the region since at least the 1990s, “underscoring the seriousness with which we take [North Korea’s] reckless behaviour.”
B-1B Lancer supersonic heavy bombers from a base in the Pacific on Guam - which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has threatened with a pre-emptive missile strike - were escorted by F-15C Eagle fighters.
The flight was a “clear message” of US military options “to defeat any threat,” the Pacific Command said.
“North Korea’s weapons programme is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies,” the statement said.
In New York, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said that US President Donald Trump’s threats are “making our rocket’s visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more.”
In his own speech on Tuesday to the United Nations, Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea if forced to defend the United States or US allies.
The Trump administration, which took office in January, has stepped up US rhetoric in response to North Korea’s heightened pace of nuclear tests and missile launches. Washington has also pressed China, North Korea’s main ally, to force Pyongyang to negotiate over the weapons programmes.
Ri said that North Korea does not need international recognition of its nuclear capabilities, and said that until international justice is realised, the “nuclear hammer of justice” is the only option.
South Korea and Japan are US “stooges,” and only countries that participate in US actions against North Korea are endangered, he said.
Trump is the “gravest threat to international peace,” said Ri, referring to the US leader as “President Evil” holding the nuclear button.
An earthquake registered earlier yesterday in North Korea near the site of a  previous nuclear test prompted a flurry of speculation that the reclusive regime had carried out another such test.
However, various national geological agencies said that it was a natural seismic event and had not been caused by an explosion.
Scientists in multiple countries reported measuring the magnitude at 3 to 3.4.
The South Korean geology agency said its analysis had determined that the quake struck around Kilju in north-eastern North Korea, about 20km south-east of the site of the latest nuclear test on September 3, and was “presumed to have occurred naturally,” the Yonhap news agency quoted an official as saying.
Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3, claiming the blast was a hydrogen bomb that can be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Separate geological agencies had detected two artificial tremors near North Korea’s previous test site before Pyongyang touted its “perfect success” in an announcement later that day.
The test provoked international condemnation and led the UN Security Council to impose fresh sanctions on North Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has lashed out as world leaders have tightened the screws over his regime’s nuclear programme and repeated missile tests.
Kim said this week that Trump’s “mentally deranged behaviour” and threat to destroy North Korea “convinced me ... that the path I chose is correct and that is the one I have to follow to the last.”
“I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” Kim said in a statement.
Kim said Trump would “pay dearly,” and that after his “ferocious declaration” of war, Pyongyang would consider a “corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure.”
When asked by reporters in New York what the countermeasure could be, Ri said: “It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific.” 












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