SEOUL, Sept 15, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - North Korea fired an unidentified
projectile into the sea on Wednesday, according to the South's military, days
after Pyongyang said it had successfully tested new long-range cruise
missiles.

  The nuclear-armed North had "fired an unidentified projectile into the East
Sea", Seoul's joint chiefs of staff said in a statement to AFP.

  No further details were immediately available, including the device type,
how far it travelled, and whether more than one projectile was involved.

  It came days after the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported
that it had test-fired a new "long-range cruise missile" over the weekend,
calling it a "strategic weapon of great significance".

  Pictures in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Monday showed a missile exiting
one of five tubes on a launch vehicle in a ball of flame, and a missile in
horizontal flight.

  Such a weapon would represent a marked advance in North Korea's weapons
technology, analysts said, better able to avoid defence systems to deliver a
warhead across the South or Japan -- both of them US allies.

  The missiles fired at the weekend travelled 1,500-kilometres (about 930
miles), on two-hour flight paths -- including figure-of-eight patterns --
above North Korea and its territorial waters to hit their targets, according
to KCNA.

  North Korea is under international sanctions for its nuclear weapons and
ballistic missile programmes, which it says it needs to defend itself against
a US invasion.

  But Pyongyang is not banned from developing cruise missiles, which it has
tested previously.