A US aircraft carrier the Navy had said was heading toward the Korean Peninsula amid rising tensions has not yet started sailing to the region, a US defense official acknowledged Tuesday.

The Navy on April 8 said it was directing a naval strike group headed by the USS Carl Vinson supercarrier to "sail north" as a "prudent measure" to deter North Korea.

Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on April 11 said the Vinson was "on her way up" to the peninsula and President Donald Trump the next day said: "We are sending an armada. Very powerful."

But a defense official on Tuesday told AFP that the ships remained off the northwest coast of Australia. A Navy photograph showed the Vinson off Java over the weekend.

"They are going to start heading north towards the Sea of Japan within next 24 hours," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The official added that the strike group wouldn't be in the region before next week at the earliest -- it is thousands of nautical miles from the Java Sea to the Sea of Japan.

At the time of the strike group's deployment, many media outlets said the ships were steaming toward North Korea, when in fact they had temporarily headed in the opposite direction.

The United States ratcheted up its rhetoric ahead of North Korea's military parade and failed missile launch over the weekend, and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday declared that the era of US "strategic patience" in dealing with Pyongyang was over.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un responded with his own fiery warnings and threatened to conduct weekly missile tests.

The strike group has been conducting drills with the Australian navy in recent days, the official said.

It has scrapped a planned port visit in Australia as a result of sailing north.

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Pyongyang should not 'test Trump's resolve': VP Pence
Seoul (AFP) April 17, 2017
US Vice President Mike Pence warned North Korea Monday not to test Donald Trump's resolve, declaring that "all options are on the table" in curbing its missile and nuclear weapons programmes. Defying international pressure, the North test-fired another missile on Sunday as fears grow that it may also be preparing for its sixth nuclear weapons test. "We hope to achieve this objective (the ... read more

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