Bloody Sunday , or the Bogside Massacre , [ 1 ] was a massacre on 30 January when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry , [ n 1 ] Northern Ireland. Thirteen men were killed outright and the death of another man four months later was attributed to gunshot injuries from the incident. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers, and some were shot while trying to help the wounded.
The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment "1 Para" , the same battalion implicated in the Ballymurphy massacre several months before. Two investigations were held by the British government. The Widgery Tribunal , held in the aftermath, largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of blame.
It described some of the soldiers' shooting as "bordering on the reckless", but accepted their claims that they shot at gunmen and bomb-throwers. The report was widely criticised as a " whitewash ". The Saville Inquiry , chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate , was established in to reinvestigate the incident much more thoroughly. Following a twelve-year investigation, Saville's report was made public in and concluded that the killings were "unjustified" and "unjustifiable".
It found that all of those shot were unarmed, that none were posing a serious threat, that no bombs were thrown and that soldiers "knowingly put forward false accounts" to justify their firing. One former soldier was charged with murder, but the case was dropped two years later when evidence was deemed inadmissible.
Bloody Sunday came to be regarded as one of the most significant events of the Troubles because so many civilians were killed by forces of the state, in view of the public and the press.
