UPI News:

North Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells near the border with South Korea on Tuesday night and again on Wednesday in what it called a “serious warning” as Seoul held annual defense exercises.

Pyongyang fired around 250 artillery shells into waters off its east and west coasts late Tuesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message to reporters. The secretive state then shot another 100 shells into the Yellow Sea on Wednesday afternoon.

In both cases, the artillery landed inside the buffer zones north of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, the JCS said.

The areas were delineated under a September 2018 military agreement signed by the two Koreas in order to reduce tensions. The JCS called the artillery fire a “clear violation” of the agreement and said the South Korean military issued “several warning messages.”

North Korea also sent hundreds of shells into the buffer zone on Friday, as it continues to ramp up tensions on the Korean Peninsula to their highest level in years.

The North’s military, known officially as the Korean People’s Army, issued a statement on Wednesday morning saying the overnight artillery shots were a “serious warning” in response to what it claimed was rocket launcher fire from the South near the inter-Korean border.

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