North and South Korean naval forces exchanged fire Tuesday in disputed waters, South Korea"s semi-official Yonhap news agency reported. The two Koreas clashed off their west coast, the first such incident in seven years, Yonhap reported, citing an unnamed South Korean defense official. "It wasn"t a close-range battle," the Navy official said. "We fired heavily on the North Korean vessel. "It is our initial assessment that the North Korean boat suffered considerable damage," said the official who declined to be identified because the information was preliminary. "No South Korean casualties were immediately reported." A senior Obama administration official told CNN that South Korea was downplaying the incident, which doesn"t appear to be deliberately provocative. A patrol ship from the Communist North crossed the demarcation line late Tuesday morning, prompting the South"s navy to fire warning shots, the South Korean official told Yonhap. "The North Koreans then fired back," the official said. Another defense official told the news agency that South Korea was not ruling out "the possibility that the clash may have been accidental."
