• The Japanese city of Hirohima on Saturday, observed the 77th anniversary of the United States’ nuclear attack in the final days of World War II.
• The annual ceremony was attended by representatives from 99 countries and the European Union.
• The mayor invited world leaders to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki to “personally encounter the consequences of using nuclear weapons”.

The Japanese city of Hirohima  on Saturday, observed the 77th anniversary of the United States’ nuclear attack in the final days of World War II, which killed an estimated 140,000 people.

Representatives from 99 countries and the European Union attended the annual ceremony at Peace Memorial Park, where the crowd gathered observed a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m. – the exact time the United States detonated its uranium bomb over the city on Aug. 6, 1945. A second bomb would kill another 70,000 people in Nagasaki three days later.

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui made a direct appeal to world leaders in his remarks.

“We must immediately render all nuclear buttons meaningless,” he said, according to media.