Sky 'turned bright red'
05/07/2006 13:07  - (SA)  

Tokyo - The sky off Japan's western coast turned bright red at around the time that North Korea unleashed a volley of missiles over the Sea of Japan on Wednesday, local residents reported.

Callers to a local television station said the sky turned "a bright red never seen before," a spokesperson for the local N21 Niigata Television station said, stressing there was no proof of anything out of the ordinary.

Kyodo News also quoted a 74-year-old woman living on Sado Island in northern Niigata prefecture as saying: "When I went outside around 04:00, the sky had a colour that I have never seen before."

She said the sky in the western part of the island turned red for about five minutes.

No unusual conditions

But a local police official reacted sceptically to the reports, saying: "The missiles were launched when the sun was rising, so residents might have been mistaken by the sunrise."

However, Japan's meteorology agency said it did not observe any unusual conditions that would cause the sky to turn bright red, leading to speculation that the missile launches might have lent the sky an eerie glow.

North Korea launched six missiles early on Wednesday morning from about 03:30, all of which splashed down in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) several hundred kilometres from the west coast of Japan.

Japan later said a seventh missile had been fired.