A minute silence was held in Hiroshima on Wednesday at a ceremony to mark 80 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city.

Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba attended the ceremony and urged all countries to work towards nuclear disarmament.

“We must make every effort to realise a world without nuclear war and ultimately a world without nuclear weapons”, Ishiba told the audience at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park.

The mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui called for the world’s most powerful countries to abandon nuclear deterrence, as residents, survivors and representatives from 120 countries gathered at the city’s peace memorial park.

He warned that the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East had contributed to a growing acceptance of nuclear weapons.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history.”

Bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 200,000 people – some from the immediate blast and others from radiation sickness and burns.