North Korea missile fears grow

Hundreds of residents of a small Japanese coastal town took part in an evacuation drill yesterday as fears grow that a North Korean missile could hit the country.

The drill in the town of Abu, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) west of Tokyo facing the Sea of Japan, simulated a ballistic missile attack in the surrounding mountains in Yamaguchi prefecture which hosts a major US Marine Corps air station, a disaster agency official said.

It came less than a week after the nuclear-armed North test-fired a short-range projectile which fell provocatively close to Japan, its 12th ballistic missile test this year -- in defiance of UN sanctions warnings and US threats of possible military action.

TV footage from Abu showed young children holding hands as they ran to a school gymnasium doubling as an evacuation centre after a siren began blaring early yesterday.

"I was able to stay calm and evacuated in a few minutes," 67-year-old Yuriko Suewaka, who was among the 280 people involved in the exercise, told Jiji Press.

The drill, organised by central and local authorities, followed a similar exercise in March in the northern prefecture of Akita.

There are plans to conduct drills later this month in Yamagata and Niigata, north of Tokyo, both of which face the Sea of Japan, the official said.

"The government has requested local communities to prepare for the holding of an evacuation drill," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The southwestern city of Onojo in Fukuoka prefecture also held a drill yesterday, independently from the central government, the official added.

Meanwhile, North Korea yesterday slammed the latest UN sanctions as "mean" and vowed to press ahead with its missile and nuclear weapons programmes.

The UN Security Council on Friday unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution imposing new targeted sanctions on a handful of North Korean officials and entities, in response to a series of ballistic missile tests this year that are banned under UN resolutions.

The resolution put North Korea's suspected spy chief, 13 other Pyongyang officials and four entities on a sanctions blacklist, hitting them with a global travel ban and an assets freeze.

The North's foreign ministry "condemns and outrightly rejects the sanctions racket put forth by the United States and the UN Security Council to prevent the strengthening of our nuclear deterrence", a ministry spokesman said.