North Korea fires missile over Japan; Tokyo issues alerts to citizens to remain inside

North Korea fired an unidentified missile from the Sunan district in its capital, Pyongyang, with the missile passing over Japan. The Japanese government said the missile had passed over Hokkaido and the country's military did not try to shoot it down.

Japan is all set to hold emergency national security council session due to the missile launch. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the country can 'never tolerate' North Korea's 'provocative' acts. Further, the country has also issued alerts to its citizens in the northern region to stay put inside.

The UN Security Council has decided to hold an emergency meeting on Friday regarding North Korea's missile launch.

The launch, from near Pyongyang, came after the United Nations Security Council imposed an eighth set of sanctions on the country over its banned missile and nuclear programmes.

That was in response to its sixth nuclear test -- by far its largest yet -- earlier this month, which Pyongyang said was a hydrogen bomb small enough to fit onto a missile.

The North has raised tensions in the region with its rapid progress in weapons technology under leader Kim Jong-Un, who is closely associated with the programme and regularly pictured by state media overseeing launches and visiting facilities.

Its last missile launch, a Hwasong-12 intermediate range missile just over two weeks ago, also overflew Japan -- its first to do so for years -- sparking emergency sirens and text alerts, before coming down in the Pacific Ocean.

Today's missile flew over Hokkaido in northern Japan "at around 07:06 am (local time) towards the Pacific Ocean", Japan's J-Alert system said, with reports saying it came down around 2,000 kilometres east of Hokkaido.

Seoul's defence ministry said it probably travelled around 3,700 kilometres and reached a maximum altitude of 770kilometres -- both higher and further than the previous device. It was fired from a similar location near the capital's airport, it added.

With PTI inputs