B-1B bomber joins US-South Korea drills as tensions escalate

SEOUL: A US B-1B bomber on Wednesday joined large-scale U.S.-South Korean military exercises that North Korea has denounced as pushing the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war as tension mounts between the North and the United States.

The bomber flew from the Pacific U.S.-administered territory of Guam and joined U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters in the annual exercises, which run until Friday.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States as part of a weapons



programme that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Asked about the bomber`s flight, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing in Beijing: "We hope relevant parties can maintain restraint and not do anything to add tensions on the Korean peninsula." 

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan and its official KCNA state news agency said at the weekend U.S. President Donald Trump`s administration was "begging for nuclear war" by staging the drills.