UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in his speech marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, said that “humanity has crossed an irreversible threshold,” without mentioning the United States.
“In a single moment, Hiroshima was engulfed in flames. Tens of thousands of lives were lost. A city was reduced to ruins. And humanity crossed a threshold from which there could be no return. You, the people of Hiroshima, rebuilt a city. You rebuilt hope. You nurtured a vision of a world without nuclear weapons. And you shared that vision with the world,” Guterres said on Wednesday.
According to the secretary-general, the risk of nuclear conflict is growing again amid intensifying geopolitical divisions, and the weapons that brought destruction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki “are once again being used as a tool of coercion.”
Guterres called for working to “eradicate the threat of nuclear weapons by eliminating the weapons themselves.”
On August 6 and 9 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The number of people who died directly from the atomic bombings is estimated to be between 70,000 and 100,000. By the end of 1945, between 90,000 and 166,000 people had died from the effects of the nuclear explosions, according to various sources.
