"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. The Nagasaki bomb, bigger and more powerful, wiped out whole communities in seconds.

The commemoration in the rebuilt city began with a moment of silence.Nagasaki's twin cathedral bells also rang in unison for the first time since the attack, in a message of peace to the world. As part of Saturday's ceremony, water offerings were made in a moving and symbolic gesture - 80 years ago victims whose skin were burning after the blast had begged for water. Today participants of different generations including a representative of the survivors offered water in a show of respect to those who perished in nuclear fire. "On 9 August 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on this city," Suzuki said in the declaration. "Now, 80 years since that day, who could have possibly imagined that our world would become like this? Immediately cease from disputes in which 'force is met with force'." (BBC)