SEOUL: North Korea said on March 12 that a recent accidental bombing of a civilian area by South Korean fighter jets in training shows a mishap could trigger a new armed conflict on the Korean peninsula,

North Korea on Monday condemned joint U.S.-South Korean military drills as a "provocative act," warning of the danger of sparking war with "an accidental single shot," days after Seoul's air force mistakenly bombed a village on its own territory.

North Korea has fired several ballistic missiles as South Korea and the United States initiated military drills. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday that North Korea’s fifth launch event this year fired several missiles off the west coast into the sea.

In a statement issued via state media on Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called the Freedom Shield drills "a dangerous provocative act of leading the acute situation on the Korean peninsula, which may spark off a physical conflict between the two sides by means of an accidental single shot, to the extreme point."

North Korea denounced joint military drills between the US and South Korea saying the South Korean Air Force’s recent bombing mistake shows the risk of the region unintentionally getting dragged into a new armed conflict.

North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea after South Korea and the U.S. kicked off their first major joint military exercise of President Donald Trump’s second term.