Fighters scream aloft as US- S Korea stage show of strength

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ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (AFP): Jet fighters roared off the deck of this massive carrier Tuesday as the US and South Korean navies staged their biggest joint exercise yet-a show of strength against North Korea.
The 97,000-ton USS George Washington, with a 4.5-acre (1.8-hectare) flight deck, is the centrepiece of a drill which began Sunday, five days after the North's deadly shelling of a South Korean border island.
The hulking grey carrier ploughed through the Yellow Sea at about 15 knots under mostly overcast skies as flight deck personnel prepared aircraft for take-offs and landings.
Its foghorn blared amid occasional poor visibility to warn fishing vessels and other ships operating in the area.
US officials said the four-day drill, which has angered the North and sparked a protest from China, was planned before the latest attack but designed to send a message of deterrence to Pyongyang.
Washington and Seoul announced a series of joint exercises after a multinational investigation concluded in May that a North Korean torpedo had sunk a South Korean warship with the loss of 46 lives.
Ten other US and South Korean warships are taking part in the latest drill, along with dozens of aircraft.
The North says the exercise brings the peninsula to "the brink of war".
"If the US and South Korean enemies dare to fire one shell in our territory and sea territory, they will have to pay for it," state media said Tuesday.
The drill is taking place off South Korea's southwest coast, far from the flashpoint inter-Korean border.
But China objects to carrier-led exercises in what it sees as its exclusive economic zone in the Yellow Sea.
Meanwhile: North Korea boasted Tuesday to running "thousands" of nuclear centrifuges, a week after launching a deadly artillery attack on South Korea, as China pressed for six-nation crisis talks.
State media in the North, which has already tested two atomic bombs made from plutonium, said "many thousands of centrifuges" are operating to enrich uranium at a new plant which it claims is for peaceful energy purposes.