S.Korean Soldiers Fire At Asiana Passenger Jet

South Korean troops fired at a passenger jet flying from China with 119 people on board after mistaking it for a North Korean aircraft, amid increasingly fraught relations on the divided peninsula.

Soldiers manning a guard post on Gyodong island, just 1.7 kilometres (one mile) south of the North Korean coast, fired their K-2 rifles on Friday towards the plane, descending as it approached Seoul's Incheon International Airport.

Ties between the two Koreas are at their lowest ebb in more than a decade after Pyongyang announced late last month it was breaking all contacts with the South's conservative government.

The plane from South Korea's Asiana airline was flying southeast over Jumun island, 12 kilometres south of Gyodong, towards Incheon.

"The firing continued about 10 minutes but the plane was too far off the rifle's range and it did not receive any damage," Yonhap news agency quoted a Marine Corps official as saying.

"When the plane appeared over Jumun island, soldiers mistook it as a North Korean military aircraft and fired."

A Marine Corps spokesman told AFP the report was correct but declined to give further details.

South Korean soldiers had been alerted to possible provocative acts by North Korea amid simmering cross-border tensions.

After a few months of relative calm, the North since late May has been using harsher rhetoric against the South's conservative government -- describing it as a US puppet bent on fuelling confrontation.

An aviation controller told AFP that the Asiana flight from China, with 119 people including crew members and passengers on board, was following a normal route.

"It was flying normally. It did not deviate from its normal route," the controller said.

An Asiana spokesman said the plane was not in danger as it was too far away from the military guard post.

- By Agence France-Presse

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