Ceremony held in Nagasaki to mark 80th anniversary of atomic bombing | BBC News

The mayor of Nagasaki has appealed for an end to the wars raging in the world on the 80th anniversary of the US atom bomb attack which destroyed the Japanese city.

"Conflicts around the world are intensifying in a vicious cycle of confrontation and fragmentation," Shiro Suzuki said in a Peace Declaration at a solemn ceremony to mark the event.

"If we continue on this trajectory, we will end up thrusting ourselves into a nuclear war."

The attack on 9 August 1945, which analysts say hastened the end of World War Two, killed an estimated 74,000 people.

In the years that followed many survivors suffered from leukaemia or other severe side effects of radiation.

Saturday's ceremony came a few days after the commemoration of the first atomic bombing, which targeted the Japanese city of Hiroshima 80 years ago on 6 August, killing an estimated 140,000 people.