AROUND 30 people gathered in Keighley’s Town Hall Square today to mark the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Peace campaigner Sylvia Boyes led the socially-distanced event, at which speakers included town mayor Councillor Peter Corkindale.

It was on August 6, 1945, that a US bomber dropped the uranium bomb above the Japanese city, killing around 140,000 people. Three days later a second nuclear weapon was dropped on Nagasaki.

Memorial events have been held globally, although many were scaled back due to the pandemic.

Among those who also addressed the Keighley gathering was retired GP Dr Richard Solomons.

He said: “It is only by extraordinary good luck that we have avoided an accidental nuclear war. Keighley would be safer without these weapons.

“Two hundred countries do not have nuclear weapons, nine possess them. We should make ourselves safer by joining those who refuse them.”