38 North, a program at Johns Hopkins University, published the images alongside the headline: "North Korea's Punggye-ri Nuclear test site: primed and ready".
Amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, North Korea has warned of a nuclear attack on the USA at any sign of American aggression.
"Regardless of what USA intentions are, there is uncertainty on the peninsula when you have three large militaries in close proximity to each other - and uncertainty can lead to miscalculation", said Bruce Klingner, former chief of the CIA's Korea branch and now senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.
China's leader, Xi Jinping, and President Donald Trump spoke by phone on Wednesday about the escalating tensions with North Korea as a prominent Chinese state-run newspaper warned the North that it faced a cutoff of vital oil supplies if it dared test a nuclear weapon.
The strike group, which deployed with about 6,500 sailors, is still some way south, conducting exercises with the Australian navy.
Arab League urges Israel to end occupation of Palestinian territory
The agenda of the Summit was topped by the turmoil in Syria, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Islamic State (IS). A photo handout by the Egyptian delegation showed the two leaders sitting next to each other in white overstuffed chairs.
"We are sending an armada".
"China insists on realizing the denuclearization of the peninsula, insists on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula, and advocates resolving the problem through peaceful means", Xi was quoted as saying. This would be the North's sixth nuclear test. North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying a satellite on April 13, 2012, to mark the centenary of his birth.
The display of US-Japan naval power close to China could upset Beijing, which is locked in a territorial dispute with Tokyo in the region over uninhabited islets close to Taiwan.
"I don't want to talk about it", Trump said during the Fox Business interview, which aired Wednesday. "They're not currency manipulators", Trump said, noting that they haven't been artificially weakening the yuan for months, and that taking action against China could hurt efforts to defuse the North Korean nuclear situation.
The call, brief details of which were released by the Chinese foreign ministry, came amid rising tensions after a U.S. Navy strike group was re-routed to the Korean Peninsula, CBS News correspondent Adriana Diaz reports. "... If conducted by Pyongyang at this time, will be a slap in the face of the USA government and will intensify the confrontation between North Korea and the US".
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