North Korea fired "multiple unidentified ballistic missiles" on Monday, South Korea's military said, the same day Seoul and Washington began a major annual joint military drill known as Freedom Shield.

North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea on Monday in what was the latest display of the communist country’s military capabilities. The missile launches were reportedly in response to the joint military drills conducted in the region between the U.

Freedom Shield drills will run until March 20, though live-fire exercises are suspended after South Korean jets mistakenly bombed a civilian border town last week.

In a statement issued via state media on Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called the Freedom Shield drills "a dangerous provocative act of leading the acute situation on the Korean peninsula, which may spark off a physical conflict between the two sides by means of an accidental single shot, to the extreme point."

North Korea condemned an ongoing U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise Wednesday, saying another incident like Seoul's recent accidental bombing of its own village near the DMZ could lead to "a new armed conflict.

Last week's accidental shelling of a South Korean village occurred less than 20 miles from the border of the nuclear-armed North.

North Korea denounced joint military drills between the US and South Korea saying the South Korean Air Force’s recent bombing mistake shows the risk of the region unintentionally getting dragged into a new armed conflict.