North Korea slams US human rights report

North Korea said Washington was a major rights abuser guilty of spilling "a sea of blood" in Iraq.

North Korea on Tuesday denounced a US human rights report, saying Washington was a major rights abuser guilty of spilling "a sea of blood" in Iraq.

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A North Korean Foreign Ministry statement said the March 8 US report which accused the communist regime of systematic rights violations had "malignantly slandered" Pyongyang.

The statement cited media disclosures of US torture of prisoners in "Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo and secret CIA-run prisons in Europe and other regions."

US troops "mercilessly massacre innocent civilians and turn Iraq into a sea of blood caused by a civil war," said the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, monitored in South Korea.

According to the US State Department report, North Korea is among countries whose citizens are deprived of human rights.

The United Nations adopted a resolution last year accusing Pyongyang of operating a vast gulag of camps for political prisoners, employing forced labour and torture, carrying out public executions and trampling on religious and other freedoms.

Last August US President George W Bush appointed Jay Lefkowitz as human rights envoy to improve human rights in North Korea.