S. Korea orders civilians on western border islands to evacuate over NK's artillery firing
Yeonpyeong Island residents stay in a shelter after an evacuation order was issued on Friday. Yonhap
Civilians on the western border islands of Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong were ordered to evacuate to shelters Friday, officials said, as North Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells off its west coast.
The emergency evacuation order was given at 12:02 p.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. on Yeongpyeong at the request of the South Korean military, according to the Ongjin County office in the western port city of Incheon.
A similar alert was issued for the western border island of Baengnyeong around the same time.
South Korea's military said it detected the artillery firings from Jangsan Cape and Deungsan Cape, both in the North's southwestern coastal areas, from 9:00 a.m. to 11 a.m.
"We announced the evacuation after receiving a call from a military unit saying it was carrying out a maritime strike on Yeongpyeong Island as it has a situation with a North Korean provocation," a county official said, adding no casualties were reported.
A passenger ferry, scheduled to depart from Incheon for Yeonpyeong at 1 p.m., was moored due to the evacuation order, according to officials.
The shells fired by North Korea splashed into the maritime buffer zone north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border. The buffer zone was established under an inter-Korean military accord signed on Sept. 19, 2018, to reduce border tensions.
Last November, North Korea unilaterally scrapped the accord after Seoul partially suspended the deal in protest of Pyongyang's successful launch of a military spy satellite. (Yonhap)