NAGASAKI – Thousands bowed their heads in prayer in Nagasaki on Saturday to mark the 80th anniversary of the city’s atomic bombing , as the mayor warned that current global conflicts could push the world again into nuclear war.

The western Japanese city was levelled on August 9, 1945, when the United States dropped a 10,000-pound plutonium-239 bomb , nicknamed “Fat Man”, instantly killing some 27,000 of the city’s estimated 200,000 people. By the end of 1945, the death toll from acute radiation exposure had reached about 70,000.

Nagasaki’s destruction came three days after a U.S. uranium-235 bomb destroyed Hiroshima. 6

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Japan surrendered on August 15, ending World War Two.

After a moment of silence at 11:02 a.m., marking the time of the blast, Mayor Shiro Suzuki called on l

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