North Korea has launched another ballistic missile, according to the Japanese prime minister’s office and South Korean officials.

Broadcaster NHK said it looked like the missile had landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, a large area that encompasses its territorial waters.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff backed up the reports and said a North Korean missile had been fired towards its eastern waters – in the direction of Japan – on Thursday morning.

It comes two days after the country fired a missile over Japan for the first time in five years, apparently in response to joint military drills in the region involving the US.

Today’s launch is North Korea’s sixth in under two weeks.

Its foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it strongly condemned the exercises for “escalating the military tensions on the Korean Peninsula”.

American aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan was involved in the drills alongside South Korean and Japanese forces.

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