North Korea on Sunday slammed the latest UN sanctions imposed on it over the country's widely-condemned intercontinental ballistic missile tests, describing the move as an "act of war".

"We fully reject the latest UN sanctions... as a violent breach of our republic's sovereignty and an act of war that destroys the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and a wider region," Pyongyang's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.