The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, initially believed to be arriving soon in waters off the Korean Peninsula as part of a show of force to Pyongyang by the U.S., appears to still be thousands of kilometers away, photos posted to the navy's website have shown.
One photo, dated Saturday, showed the carrier transiting the Sunda Strait, the passage between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java — some 5,600 km from South Korea. Other pictures, dated Friday and Saturday, were accompanied by captions noting the carrier's location as the Indian Ocean.
A carrier strike group led by the Vinson was initially scheduled to visit Australia for port calls, but was rerouted on April 9, reportedly to waters off the Korean Peninsula in a signal to the nuclear-armed North designed to deter it from further nuclear and missile tests.