The USFK official, speaking to Reuters, however, declined to name the bomber’s type or the size of the fleet.
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Yonhap quoted a government source as saying: “Indications have been gathered that the North has completed preparations to conduct a nuclear test at any time in the third tunnel that has not been used previously”.
“North Korea continues to present a growing threat to the region, to our allies, to ourselves, and we will do everything possible to defend against that growing threat”, Sung Kim said.
On Monday, Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States and a leading expert on North Korea’s nuclear programme, said Pyongyang’s claims that it had standardized a nuclear warhead for mounting on ballistic missiles and could produce as many bombs as it wanted had to be taken seriously.
The UK, US and France pushed for the 15-member body to impose new sanctions.
U.S. troops have been based in South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War ended only in an armistice and not a full peace treaty.
On Friday, North Korea reported a major advance in its efforts.
North Korea is ready to conduct additional nuclear tests at “any time, ” South Korea said Monday, raising the prospect that the isolated nation may soon detonate its sixth device. “The Alliance is taking steps each and every day to defend the Republic of Korea and we are always maintaining a high state of readiness”, the spokesman said.
North Korea’s propaganda machine, for its part, has kept up its typical anti-Seoul threats and crude insults against Park, calling her “hideous confrontation manic” and “the Korean nation’s biggest trouble-maker”.
According to the Associated Press, Moon did not offer evidence to back the claim, merely saying South Korea and US intelligence authorities believe North Korea has the ability to detonate another atomic device anytime.
The allies are now spearheading a campaign to craft a fresh batch of stronger sanctions at the UN Security Council, while exploring independent steps to back up the global resolution.
The bomber can be armed with nuclear missiles and “bunker buster” bombs that are capable of destroying the North’s hardened underground facilities.
The South has no atomic weapons of its own and shelters under the nuclear “umbrella” of its U.S. ally, which stations 28,500 troops in South Korea.
Sung Kim, the US State Department’s special representative for North Korea policy, said on Sunday during a visit to Japan that Washington and Tokyo would work closely “to come up with the strongest possible measure against North Korea’s latest action”.
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With ripples from North Korea’s latest nuclear test continuing to spread throughout the region, speculation surfaced Monday that the communist state may be gearing up to detonate another fission device in defiance of worldwide condemnation.
