US President Donald Trump issued a new threat to North Korea on Friday, saying the US military was "locked and loaded" as Pyongyang accused him of driving the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.
Trump kept up the war of words on Twitter shortly after the North Korean state news agency, KCNA, put out a statement blaming him for the escalated tensions, Reuters reported.
"Trump is driving the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war, making such outcries as 'the US will not rule out a war against the DPRK,'" KCNA said.
The US president, who is vacationing at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf resort, described American military readiness in stark terms.
"Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely," he wrote on Twitter. "Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!"
Trump maintained pressure on the North after a week of incendiary rhetoric including his warning on Tuesday that the United States would unleash "fire and fury" on Pyongyang if it threatened the United States.
US allies in the region reacted with alarm to the unusual response from Washington and senior US officials scrambled to play down his comments.
Still, Trump amplified the warning on Thursday, saying maybe his "fire and fury" threat "wasn't tough enough." US Defense Secretary James Mattis later tempered Trump's harsh words, saying the United States still preferred a diplomatic approach to the North Korean threat. A war would be "catastrophic," he said.
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