Seoul, Mar 10 (IANS): North Korea announced on Friday that its leader Kim Jong-un oversaw a "fire assault drill" of an artillery unit as he stressed the need to "overwhelmingly respond" to any war preparations by its "enemy".

Photos released by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also showed Kim's daughter Ju-ae attending the "field guidance" on Thursday, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Kim inspected the "Hwasong artillery unit charged with important operational task of the Korean People's Army on the western front on March 9 and watched a fire assault drill", the KCNA said in its report.

"He stressed the need to always stay alert for all sorts of more frantic war preparation moves being committed by the enemy recently and maintain and steadily train the powerful capability to overwhelmingly respond to and contain them all the time so as to thoroughly deter the danger of a military clash on the Korean Peninsula," it added.

Kim "examined the actual war response posture of the 8th fire assault company under the unit charged with striking the enemy's operation airport in the direction of the western front", implying that the drills were aimed at striking the South's military airfields in case of a war.

On Thursday, South Korea's military said the North fired at least one short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) toward the Yellow Sea from the North's western port city of Nampho at 6.20 p.m.

Pyongyang's latest provocation came as the allies are preparing to kick off the Freedom Shield exercise set to take place from Monday through March 23.

The exercise is to proceed concurrently with the large-scale field training exercise, called the Warrior Shield.