Two Koreas exchange warning shots near maritime border amid tensions - Reuters

SEOUL, Oct 24 (Reuters) - North and South Korea exchanged informing shots disconnected the westbound seashore connected Monday, accusing each different of breaching their occidental maritime borderline amid heightened subject tension.

The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it broadcast warnings and fired informing shots to spot disconnected a North Korean merchant vas that crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto oversea boundary, astatine astir 3:40 a.m. (1840 GMT Sunday).

The North's subject said it fired 10 artillery shells aft a South Korean navy vessel violated the NLL and fired informing shots "on the pretext of tracking down an unidentified ship," according to authorities media.

"We ordered archetypal countermeasures to powerfully expel the force warship by firing 10 shells of aggregate rocket launchers adjacent the waters wherever the force question occurred," a spokesperson for the General Staff of the North's Korean People's Army said successful a connection carried by the authoritative KCNA quality agency.

The JCS said it had conducted a "normal operation" implicit the borderline intrusion, and called the North's determination a "provocation" and a usurpation of a 2018 bilateral subject pact banning "hostile acts" successful the borderline areas.

"We erstwhile again impulse North Korea to instantly cease accordant provocations and accusations which harm the bid and stableness of the Korean peninsula arsenic good arsenic the planetary community," the JCS said successful a statement.

The latest speech of occurrence came amid simmering tension, with the North carrying retired weapons tests astatine an unprecedented gait this year.

In caller weeks, North Korea launched short-range ballistic missiles and hundreds of artillery rounds disconnected its eastbound and westbound coasts connected respective occasions successful protestation implicit the South's subject activities.

South Korea's troops kicked disconnected their annual Hoguk defence drills past week, designed to tally until Oct. 28 and boost their ain and combined ability with the United States to antagonistic the North's atomic and rocket threats.

Pyongyang has angrily reacted to the drills, calling them provocations and threatening countermeasures. Seoul and Washington accidental their exercises are antiaircraft and aimed astatine deterring the North.

Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi and Hyonhee Shin; editing by Diane Craft and Stephen Coates

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