North Korea fires missile towards Japan

The Japanese government has issued a warning to its citizens after North Korea fired a missile over the country.It was launched from the Sunan district of Pyongyang, South Korea's military said.The missile flew over Japan, NHK television said, and the government is warning citizens to avoid touching anything that looks like debris.It comes as North Korea threatened to nuke Japan and reduce the US 'to ashes and darkness' in response to the latest sanctions imposed by the UN.'Japan can never tolerate this repeated provocative action by North Korea,' Tokyo's government spokesman told reporters, adding that the country will make an appropriate response.'We have strongly protested to the North, telling them the strong anger by the Japanese people and condemn with the strongest words possible.'Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said he believes the latest test was of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).South Korea said its military fired a Hyunmoo-2 ballistic missile into the sea in response to the North's launch.It landed 1,240 miles off the cape of Erimo in Hokkaido island at about 6.57am local time.South Korea's defence ministry said it probably travelled around 2,300 miles and reached a maximum altitude of 478 miles after being launched near Pyongyang's airport.It was the second aggressive test-flight over the territory of the close US ally in less than a month and it followed the sixth and most powerful nuclear test by North Korea to date on September 3.The UN Security Council will meet at 7pm tonight to discuss the latest North Korea missile test at the request of the United States and Japan.The North previously launched a ballistic missile from Sunan on August 29, which flew over Japan's Hokkaido island and landed in the Pacific.The South Korean and US militaries are analysing details of the launch, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the UN sanctions on North Korea needed to be firmly imposed.He added that the international community must send a clear message to North Korea over its provocative actions.He said: 'We can never tolerate that North Korea trampled on the international community's strong, united resolve toward peace that has been shown in UN resolutions and went ahead again with this outrageous act.''If North Korea continues to walk down this path, it has no bright future. We must make North Korea understand this,' he added.US President Donald Trump has been briefed about the launch, Chief of Staff John Kelly said.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said 'these continued provocations only deepen North Korea's diplomatic and economic isolation'.He said that 'all nations' should take new measures against the dictatorship.'China and Russia must indicate their intolerance for these reckless missile launches by taking direct actions of their own,' he added.He also said China supplies North Korea with most of its oil and 'Russia is the largest employer of North Korean forced l