Hiroshima's mayor lashed out at the United States' nuclear weapons policy during ceremonies marking the 58th anniversary of the city's atomic bombing, which caused the deaths of over 230,000 people. Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said the United States worshipped nuclear weapons as "God" and blamed it for jeopardising the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse," Akiba said in an address to some 40,000 people. "The chief cause is US nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called 'useable nuclear weapons,' appears to worship nuclear weapons as God," he said. The mayor also slammed as unjust the US-led war on Iraq, which he blamed for killing innocent civilians. "The weapons of mass destruction that served as the excuse for the war have yet to be found," he said. Akiba strongly urged US President George W. Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to personally visit Hiroshima and "confront the reality of nuclear war". As the clock clicked onto 8:15 am, the exact time the United States dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945, those at the ceremony at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park bowed their heads for a minute's silence in memory of the victims of the attack. During the 45-minute ceremony, officials added 5,050 names to the register of victims who died immediately or from the after-effects of radiation exposure in the bombing, bringing the total toll to 231,920, an official said. The Hiroshima bombing was followed by the dropping of a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, which killed another estimated 74,000 people. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Doves fly over the cenotaph for the Atomic-bomb victims and the A-bomb Dome during the 58th annual memorial service for the two hundred thousand A-bomb victims at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. (AFP/Kazuhiro Nogi)