With prayers, wreaths and emotional calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons, the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Saturday marked the 60th anniversary of the world's first atomic attack.
Hiroshima fell silent as a relative of one of the more than 140,000 dead joined a child in ringing a bell at 8:15 am (2315 GMT Friday), the exact moment 60 years ago when a single US bomb flattened the southern city.
Under a scorching sun, some 55,000 people recited silent prayers and laid wreaths before a memorial to the dead within sight of the famous A-bomb dome, a former exhibition hall burned to a skeleton by the bomb's incinerating heat.
"Today, we are all Hibakusha," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a speech read in his name, using the Japanese word for victims of nuclear bombings, before 1,000 doves were released to fly above the dome.
The 60th anniversary of the world's first nuclear attacks comes amid tension with both North Korea and Iran, which are locked in heated negotiations with the international community over their nuclear ambitions.
Annan said that for all the pledges not to repeat the tragedy of 60 years ago, "Sadly, the world has made little progress."
"Without concerted action, we may face a cascade of nuclear proliferation," Annan said in the statement read by Nobuyasu Abe, the UN under-secretary for disarmament.
Before dawn, residents of Hiroshima ranging from workers in uniform to old men walking with canes gathered at the memorial in the heart of the city to burn incense, lay flowers and say prayers for the dead.
Michie Kakimoto, a slender 79-year-old who needs a cane to walk, said she still "cannot explain" the suffering she endured on August 6, 1945.
"For more than 50 years after the war, I couldn't come here. And I still can't visit the museum," she said.
With another 5,375 survivors of the Hiroshima bombing dying in the past year, leaders recommitted themselves to keeping alive the memories of the horror 60 years ago.
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba accused nuclear states of "jeopardising human survival" with their "selfish" attachment to nuclear weapons and called on the United Nations to take concrete action to abolish them by 2020.
Amid tension with neighbouring nations over Japan's history, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan was steadfast in its post-World War II pacifism and recommitted Japan to "take the lead" to abolish nuclear weapons.
"We are the only nation in human history that suffered from atomic bombing," the prime minister said.
But Koizumi, a close ally of US President George W. Bush, was heckled before taking the podium by a small group of pacifists who shouted, "Koizumi, go home."
As the event ended, an elderly man yelled at him, "Prime Minister Koizumi, don't go to Yasukuni," referring to a war shrine in Tokyo the premier has visited each year in defiance of nations who were invaded by Japan.
Yohei Kono, the speaker of the lower house, who is known as a pacifist, linked the nuclear trauma to Japan's past misdeeds.
Japan could have helped Asian nations fight Western colonialism but instead "deprived Korea of its independence and invaded China, which is the same imperialist path the Western powers had taken," Kono said.
"Even though there were some individual Japanese who helped Asian nations become independent, Japan as a nation took this imperialist path," Kono said. "One of the consequences was the atomic bomb attack."
The Hiroshima bombing killed more than 140,000 people either immediately or in the months that followed from horrific burns or radiation. The United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on August 9 on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000 people. Emperor Hirohito surrendered on August 15.
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