North Korea threatens strike on Guam
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Zachary Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — North Korea’s military is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic missiles, state-run news agency KCNA said early Wednesday local time.
The threat comes just hours after US President Donald Trump warned Pyongyang that if they continued to threaten the US, they would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Dubbed the “Tip of the Spear,” Guam is a key to the US military’s forward deployed presence in the Pacific and is home to thousands of American service members and their families.
The statement from a spokesman from the Strategic Force of the Korean People’s Army, warned that recent US military maneuvers —including an intercontinental ballistic missile test last week and a bomber flight on Monday — “may provoke a dangerous conflict.”
Specifically, the statement mentioned a potential strike on “Anderson Air Force Base in which the US strategic bombers, which get on the nerves of the DPRK and threaten and blackmail it through their frequent visits to the sky above south Korea, are stationed and to send a serious warning signal to the US.”
The US flew two B1B bombers over the Korean peninsula on Monday, according to a spokesman with Pacific Air Forces. The bombers flew out of Anderson AFB in Guam on Monday as part of its “continuous bomber presence”, according to the spokesman. The bombers were joined by Japanese and South Korean aircraft.
The North Korean statement on Guam references this action. This was before Trump’s warning to North Korea on Tuesday.