As shocking new images of Gaza’s flattened landscape smothered in ash and dust emerge, the world is pausing to remember another conflict that produced widespread devastation: the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

On 6 August 1945, ‘Little Boy’ was unleashed on the Japanese city by the United States, vaporizing tens of thousands of people in seconds and killing upwards of 140,000 over the months that followed. Japan surrendered soon after, ending World War II.

On the 80th anniversary of the blast, human rights organisations and Japanese activists from Hiroshima alike have voiced their fears about Gaza and that the lessons of the past have still not been learned.

“When images of Gaza are placed alongside those of Hiroshima 80 years ago, the parallels are striking,” said Kristyan Benedict, the UK’s crisis response manager for Amnesty International, told The Independent.

“Like Hiroshima, the devastation in Gaza is apocalyptic - entire families wiped out, children buried beneath rubble, and hospitals and schools reduced to dust.”

Juliette Touma, communications director for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa told The Independent that one of her colleagues had recently been in Rafah, an area of southern Gaza which has been largely razed to the ground by Israeli bombardment.

“She drove to get out of Gaza by Rafah in the south, and she said that Rafah looked like Hiroshima. I asked her if she had photos, and she said they were not allowed to take any. But then we both Googled photos from Hiroshima, and she said: ‘That's exactly how [Rafah] looks like today’.”

Israel maintains that Hamas is responsible for both the war - that began after around 1,200 people were killed and around more 250 abducted by the terror group on 7 October 2023 - and the scale of the destruction in Gaza.

When asked about the “levelling” of Gaza in a recent Sky News interview, a spokesman for the Israeli government said: “We regard any harm to civilians as a tragedy, while this terrorist organisation of Hamas, it is their strategy. They endanger innocent people and they use them as human shields. Israel, by contrast, makes every effort to prevent and minimise as much as possible harm to civilian population including evacuating civilians from combat areas.”

Thousands of miles away in Hiroshima, fears about Gaza’s future were shared at an event to mark the anniversary on Wednesday.

"No Nuke, Stop War" and "Free Gaza! No more genocide" read some of the slogans held by hundreds of protestors who demonstrated outside the Peace Memorial Park, where prime minister Shigeru Ishiba attended an official ceremony.

A Palestinian representative also joined the event for the first time. Around 55,000 people, including representatives from a record 120 countries and regions - including Russia and Belarus -were set to attend. The city held a minute of silence as a peace bell rang out at 8:15am, the same time a US B-29 dropped the bomb on the city.

Hiroshima’s mayor Kazumi Matsui warned against a growing acceptance of using nuclear weapons for national security during Russia's war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East, with the United States and Russia possessing most of the world's nuclear warheads.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” he said. “They threaten to topple the peacebuilding frameworks so many have worked so hard to construct.”

In June, Israel launched ‘Operation Rising Lion’ with attacks on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile facilities in a bid to scupper any attempt by Tehran to develop a weapon of mass destruction.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly raised fears about what would happen if Iran had access to nuclear weapons and the devastation they would bring.

Some Hiroshima survivors said on Wednesday they were disappointed by Donald Trump's recent remark justifying Washington's own attack on Iran in June by comparing it to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“It's ridiculous," said Kosei Mito, a 79-year-old former high school teacher who was exposed to radiation while he was still in his mother's womb. “I don't think we can get rid of nuclear weapons as long as it was justified by the assailant.”

In the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV said Wednesday he was praying for those who suffered physical, psychological and social effects from the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, adding that the event remains “a universal warning against the devastation caused by wars and, in particular, by nuclear weapons.”