United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres joined thousands of people gathered at the Peace Park in central Hiroshima to commemorate the bombing that killed 140,000 before the end of 1945.
“Nuclear weapons are nonsense, they guarantee no safety, only death and destruction, after three quarters of a century, we must ask what we learned from the mushroom cloud that rose over this city in 1945,” Guterres said.
For his part, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who chose Hiroshima as the venue for next year’s G7 summit, called on the world to give up nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.
At 8.15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a US warplane dropped a bomb called “Little Boy” and wiped out the city of an estimated population of 350,000, and thousands more died later from radiation-related injuries and illnesses.
International crises are escalating and direct confrontations are emerging between major powers around the world, from Ukraine, eastern and northern Europe to Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
Earlier, Guterres warned the world that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, or one miscalculation, from nuclear annihilation,” citing the ongoing war in Ukraine, nuclear threats in Asia and the Middle East, in addition to many other factors.
Guterres issued his dire warning at the opening of a long-delayed high-level meeting to review the landmark 50-year-old treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.
Observers believe that Guterres’ words reflect the fact that international crises, amid conflicts of influence and intense interests between the global poles, from Ukraine to Taiwan, are already threatening to get things out of control, and this turmoil and interchange in the relations of these major powers have turned into direct wars that may develop into devastating nuclear conflicts.
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