PEACE campaigners and officials gathered in Bradford today for a poignant service to mark the 69th anniversary of the dropping of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima.

Dignitaries, including the Lord Mayor of Bradford Councillor Mike Gibbons, chaplain of the University of Bradford Reverend Suzanne Vernon-Yorke and co-chairman of Yorkshire CND Dave Webb, were among those who read poetry, messages from the Mayor of Hiroshima and accounts of victims of the disaster.

The vigil, held in Norfolk Gardens near City Hall, commemorated the anniversary of the Hiroshima attack on August 6, 1945 that killed an estimated 140,000 people.

Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki killing a further 70,000.

The service concluded with a wreath of white flowers being laid by the Mayor and a candle lit on a memorial stone to the Hiroshima victims by Bradford peace campaigner Brenda Thomson.