Reporters at the scene described a series of explosions throughout the day, three of them in entry tunnels to the underground facility, followed by explosions that demolished a nearby barracks and other structures.
Tom Cheshire, the Asia correspondent for Sky News and one of the journalists invited to watch the demolition, said: “We hiked up into the mountains and watched the detonation from about 500 metres away. They counted it down: three, two, one.
“There was a huge explosion, you could feel it. Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was extremely loud.”
North Korea did not invite any independent observers from overseas.
The gesture is meant to reinforce the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s pledge to stop nuclear tests before a summit with Donald Trump on 12 June in Singapore.
Despite the North Korea’s desire to close the site, a war of words between Pyongyang and Washington this week cast a dark cloud over the summit, with both sides threatening to delay or pull out of the talks.
North Korea has used the site at Punggye-ri for all six of its nuclear tests. The most recent one, in September, which produced a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that was felt across the border in China and Pyongyang, claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
