North Korea has asked Russia and other countries to consider evacuating their embassies because of rising tensions on the Peninsula.

Reuters reported from Moscow that a North Korean Foreign Ministry representative “proposed that the Russian side consider the issue of the evacuation of employees in connection with the increasingly tense situation”, embassy spokesman Denis Samsonov told the agency by phone from Pyongyang.

He said other foreign embassies in the North Korean capital had received similar requests.

Mr. Samsonov said Russia was examining the request but was not planning an evacuation at this stage, adding that staff at the embassy saw no outward signs of increased tension in the city, Reuters reported.

North Korea has threatened to use nuclear weapons against the United States if provoked, the most aggressive rhetoric in a month-long war of words following UN sanctions against the isolated pariah state and joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

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