Hiroshima on Thursday urged world leaders to abolish nuclear weapons amid rising global tensions, as the city marked the 81st anniversary of the US atomic bombing, Kyodo News reported.

"Downplaying the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and accepting the use of force to pursue one’s own prosperity risks cycles of violent retaliation that could ultimately result in another Hiroshima or Nagasaki," Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said in the Peace Declaration read during the annual memorial ceremony.

His warning came after the failure of the latest review conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to produce a consensus document.

He urged policymakers to recognise the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and to lead by example by advancing multilateral efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

During the annual memorial ceremony, participants observed a minute of silence at 08:15, the exact time when the US bomber Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb over Hiroshima on 6th August, 1945. The attack claimed an estimated 140,000 lives by the end of that year.