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North Korea Shells South, South Retaliates
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23-11-2010 7:23am#1
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North Korean shells hit disputed border islandNorth Korea appears to have shelled a South Korean village with artillery today killing at least one person and injuring several others in one of the most serious incidents since the Korean war.
South Korea scrambled F-16 jets to the scene after the surprise bombardment earlier this morning on an island close to the countries’ disputed maritime border.
At least one South Korean soldier was killed and around 13 others injured. Two civilians were also hurt and dozens of buildings damaged by the attack on Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea.
According to the South Korean media at least 50 shells landed on Yeonpyeong Island, provoking return fire from troops stationed there.
YTN television quoted a witness as saying 60 to 70 houses were on fire after the shelling and TV footage showed plumes of smoke coming from the island.
“Houses and mountains are on fire and people are evacuating. You can’t see very well because of plumes of smoke,” a witness on the island told YTN.
“People are frightened to death.”
A witness said residents had been evacuated during the shelling, which lasted for about an hour and then stopped abruptly.
The island is about 3 km (1.8 miles) south of the sea border and 75 miles west of Seoul.
China, the closest the isolated state of North Korea has to an ally, expressed concern about the incident.
“A North Korean artillery unit staged an illegal firing provocation at 2:34pm [local time] and South Korean troops fired back immediately in self-defence,” a spokesman for Seoul’s defence ministry told AFP.
Photographs taken from a boat offshore showed black smoke rising from the small town on the island which is hard up against the Northern Limit Line which separates the maritime territory of the two countries.
One resident of the island, Lee Jong Sik, told South Korea’s YTN television : “At least ten houses are burning. I can’t see clearly for the smoke. The hillsides are also on fire. We were told by loudspeakers to flee our homes.”
The area has been the site of repeated clashes since the Korean War. It was close to there in April that the Cheonan, the South Korean naval corvette, was sunk in what appears to have been a North Korean attack, with the loss of 46 lives.
Three times before, in the past decade, there have been naval battles between North and South off Yeonpyeong Island – often in June during the peak fishing season for blue crab, when North Korean commercial boats sometimes flout the boundary in search of better fishing grounds.
The attack comes just as a US envoy is travelling to the region after revelations that the North is moving ahead with uranium enrichment, a possible second path to manufacture material for atomic weapons.
North Korea has said it wants to restart six-party nuclear disarmament talks it abandoned two years ago. But Seoul and Washington have said the North must move forward with previous pledges to curtail its nuclear programme.
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