Tensions between North Korea and the United States have amplified after the North vowed Thursday to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.
The threat comes hours before a vote by the United Nations on whether to place new sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear test.
The Associated Press reported an unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry as saying North Korea will launch "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors."
According to the AP, North Korea believes Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.
Hostile and inflammatory rhetoric is common from North Korea. At a U.N. disarmament meeting in Geneva last month the North threatened to attack neighboring South Korea for its cooperation with the U.S.
Analysts believe North Korea does not have the ability to produce a nuclear warhead small enough to be attached to a missile with a range capable of hitting the U.S., the AP reported.
The U.N. is expected to ratify a resolution that will impose some of the strongest sanctions ever ordered by the United Nations, the article stated. The U.N. vote will take place at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) and reports indicate the resolution will have the support of all 15 U.N. Security Council member states.
North Korea responded to news of the new sanctions with an address through the North's official Korean Central News Agency, saying the state "strongly warns the U.N. Security Council not to make another big blunder like the one in the past when it earned the inveterate grudge of the Korean nation by acting as a war servant for the U.S. in 1950."
North Korea is still technically at war with South Korea, fighting stopped in 1953 because of an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman made headlines recently after visiting the North for an exhibition basketball game, meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and calling him his "friend."
Rodman is the highest profile American to meet with the North Korean leader since Kim inherited power from his father in 2011.
"There is nobody at the CIA who could tell you more personally about Kim Jong Un than Dennis Rodman, and that in itself is scary," said former Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Ganyard to ABC News.
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