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South Korean news agency says North Korea fires new missile

A USA official said previously the missile launch appeared to have failed in flight over the Sea of Japan.

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The National Intelligence Service said Sunday the group also known as Daesh, ISIS and ISIL has encouraged its followers to launch attacks on the bases, CNN reported.

Both test were believed to be of a much-hyped, intermediate-range Musudan missile capable of reaching U.S. bases as far away as Guam.

The North test fired what appeared to be two medium-range Musudan missiles in quick succession, Yonhap news agency said. It was unclear what happened in the latest firing.

The first missile launch occurred at 5:58 a.m. local time and the South Korean military presumed that one had been a failure, according to a spokesperson from the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The U.S. military detected a missile launch from North Korea, Navy Commander Dave Benham, a spokesman from the U.S. military’s Pacific Command, told Reuters in Washington on Tuesday after the first launch without providing details.

Each new test also presumably provides valuable insights to North Korean scientists and military officials as they push toward their goal of a nuclear and missile program that can threaten the US mainland.

The launches were in continued defiance of global warnings and a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the North from using ballistic missile technology, which Pyongyang rejects as an infringement of its sovereignty.

The last several months have been particularly contentious on the Korean peninsula, after North Korea claimed to have tested its first hydrogen bomb and fired a satellite into orbit. Pyongyang says its rivals must negotiate with it as an established nuclear power, something Washington and Seoul refuse to do. The North was slapped with the strongest United Nations sanctions in two decades after it conducted a fourth nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year. But South Korean officials have said the North doesn’t yet possess such a weapon.

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Japan had been on alert for a possible launch, with Nakatani ordering the Self-Defense Forces on Tuesday to prepare to intercept any ballistic missiles from North Korea that flew toward Japanese territory or waters.

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