North Korea says missile launches were training for striking U.S. bases in Japan

In an unusually overt threat to Japan, North Korea said Tuesday that firing a barrage of missiles a day earlier was training for a strike on U.S. military bases in the country — a type of saturation attack that experts say could leave Japan vulnerable.

Monday's exercise, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe characterized as "a new level of threat," involved artillery units from the North's "Strategic Force tasked to strike the bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan in contingency," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday.

Pyongyang demonstrated its growing military capabilities with the apparent simultaneous launch of four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, three of which fell inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. Japan's Defense Ministry said they flew about 1,000 km and reached an altitude of about 260 km.