The Yalu River that marks China’s border with North Korea breached a dyke today after torrential rain, inundating parts of the Chinese city of Dandong and forcing the evacuation of more than 50,000 people.

A North Korean guard shot dead three people and wounded a fourth on the border with China last week, it emerged today.

Stormy conditions forced South Korea’s military to suspend the search for 46 sailors missing since a mysterious blast blew apart their navy ship last week, officials said today.

A global crackdown on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme began today, with countries divided over how to enforce UN sanctions in a foreboding sign that imposing the punitive measures may not be easy.

Flooding that may have killed thousands in North Korea is being ignored because of the country’s pariah status after recent missile launches, a South Korean aid group said today as it prepared to ship aid for victims.

Nearly 500 people were in quarantine in China’s capital Beijing and a southern province today as authorities raced to contain a small eruption of SARS before a national holiday puts millions of travellers on the road.

SECRETIVE North Korea finally admitted last night that several hundred people were killed and thousands injured when trains carrying explosives and blew up in a station.

Two trains that collided triggering a massive blast in North Korea were carrying explosives and not fuel, while casualty figures appeared to be lower than originally feared, an international Red Cross official said today.

North Korea was maintaining its cloak of silence today over the crash between two North Korean fuel trains that is believed to have killed or injured as many as 3,000 people.

SOME 3,000 people were dead or injured after two trains carrying fuel collided and exploded at a North Korean railway station near the Chinese border yesterday.

NORTH Korea declared a state of emergency and closed down phonelines last night as the paranoid Stalinist state attempted to impose a news blackout after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured in a horror train crash.

North Korea declared a state of emergency tonight after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured when two fuel trains collided and exploded at a station near the Chinese border.

A state of emergency was declared in North Korea after two trains carrying highly inflammable freight collided and exploded, killing or injuring up to 3,000 people.

Thousands of people were reported injured, many killed, when two trains carrying oil and liquefied petroleum gas collided and exploded in a North Korean train station, hours after leader Kim Jong Il passed through on his return from a China visit.