Warsaw, 1 August 2023 (dpa/MIA) — Poland on Tuesday marked the 79th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising to free the city from German occupation with a call for unity and resistance.

The Polish resistance had fought for Poland's unity in 1944, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, speaking in the Museum for the Warsaw Uprising. Unity should to be the hallmark of Polish identity today as well, Morawiecki said.

The Polish underground resistance - Armia Krajowa, or Home Army - launched its attack on the occupying Germans on August 1, 1944, with the aim of seizing the capital before the Soviet Red Army moved in from the east.

German forces suppressed the uprising over 63 days, massacring civilians and destroying large parts of the city.

Speaking at another event, President Andrzej Duda put the number of civilians killed at 180,000. Poland had to learn from its history "to be so strong that no one would dare to attack it," Duda said.

Opposition leader Donald Tusk said the wartime resistance had laid down their lives for the love of fatherland, for freedom and for human dignity.

Poland marks the day each year with commemoration events and the laying of wreaths. Sirens sound at 5 pm to mark the time set by the resistance to launch the attacks.

The Warsaw Uprising followed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising more than a year earlier, when Jews in the ghetto refused to surrender to be transported to their deaths. The ghetto was then destroyed.