North Korean UN diplomat warns nuclear war may be imminent

Not for the first time in recent weeks, there's been another chilling warning from North Korea.

This time, it comes courtesy of the country's deputy UN ambassador, who warned on Monday that the situation on the Korean peninsula has now reached a stage where "nuclear war may break out at any moment." Speaking to the the UN General Assembly's disarmament committee, Kim In-ryong explained that no other country in the world has been subjected to such an "extreme and direct nuclear threat" from the United States since the 1970s. With this in mind, he said that the country had the right to manufacture nuclear weapons of their own in self-defence. The Telegraph report that Kim went on to warn that North Korean missiles can target any part of the United States, with the country's east coast now within range of its missiles. "The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe," he said. President Trump has recently tweeted that attempts to negotiate with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, are a "waste of time". The European Union has announced new sanctions against the country after it emerged they'd been developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Vladimir Putin also made clear on Monday that Russia would be cutting some of its ties with North Korea in line with UN sanctions.