World leaders rushed to condemn North Korea yesterday for a second nuclear test that Russia estimated might have been as powerful as the bombs dropped on Japan in the second world war.
The United Nations security council was due to hold an emergency meeting last night to discuss a response to the move, which US president Barack Obama described as a “reckless” step that had to be addressed by the international community.
China, the closest country North Korea has to an ally, joined Japan and South Korea in condemning the test, which was accompanied by the firing of at least one short-range missile without warning. The Kremlin expressed “serious concern” about the test, the scale of which was slightly bigger than its first blast in 2006, according to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation.