Koreas battle: Armies on high alert, civilians found dead on island
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South Korea's troops were on high alert today as their government exchanged threats with rival North Korea following a frightening military skirmish that ratcheted tensions on the peninsula to new extremes.
Also, bodies of two civilians were found on Wednesday on the South Korean island that came under artillery bombardment from the North, a media report said. The deaths were the first civilian fatalities reported in the attack, Yonhap News Agency said.
President Barack Obama reaffirmed Washington's pledges to protect ally Seoul after the North shelled a South Korean island near their disputed border, killing at least two marines in what UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called one of the "gravest incidents" since the end of the Korean War.
South Korea vowed retaliation and today said it would strengthen military forces in the disputed western waters near the island of Yeonpyeong and to halt aid to the communist North, while the North warned of more military strikes if the South encroaches on the maritime border by "even 0.001 millimeter".
South Korea sent two ships carrying 2,000 boxes of relief supplies to the stricken island today, Coast guard official Kim Dong-jin said. He said that about 340 residents escaping the island were to arrive at the port city of Incheon aboard a Coast Guard ship around mid-afternoon.
Images released by the local government and obtained through YTN television showed people huddled in emergency shelters, children wrapped in blankets, rows of destroyed houses with collapsed walls, blown out windows and charred roofs.
A man with a shovel walked through the rubble. The skirmish began yesterday when North Korea warned the South to halt military drills near their sea border, according to South Korean officials.
When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters but away from the North Korean shore the North retaliated by shelling Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population - AP
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