A press photographer yesterday described taking photographs of people at the makeshift barricade in the Bogside, moments before the first of several youths were shot dead there.
Mr Ciaran Donnelly, who was a staff photographer for The Irish Times when he covered the march on Bloody Sunday, January 30th, 1972, said that while he was taking pictures behind the rubble barricade, he heard what he thought was two live rounds being fired.
"People on the barricade ducked and I heard someone shout `don't run away - they're only firing blanks'," he said. There were about eight to ten youths standing on the top of the barricade and one had his arms in the air and was "taunting the army".
Shortly after hearing the first two live rounds, he saw this youth fall to the ground. "I then saw another guy fall on the other side of the barricade . . . and thought `I'm getting out of here'." He ran into Glenfada Park nearby and saw a body being carried into the carpark there. He then heard a burst of automatic fire.
The witness told Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, that he was not familiar with the sound of automatic fire. He at first thought the firing might have been from the gun mounted on a Ferret armoured scout car which he had seen enter the Bogside. In retrospect, it might have been a Thompson sub-machinegun.
He drove to Dublin that night with his film. He estimated that he had shot between four and six reels of film, each containing 35 exposures. Only a small proportion had survived, as a flood had damaged The Irish Times's photographic library.
He said he believed that among the photographs that were missing were some that must have been taken at the very time when two men were being shot on the barricade.
He said, however, that he believed that all the photographs he took on the day were produced for the Widgery Tribunal in 1972.
The witness was asked by Mr Arthur Harvey QC, for a number of next-of-kin of Bloody Sunday victims, whether he had seen anything behind the barricade which would have justified five people being shot dead by the army. Mr Donnelly replied: "No."
Mr Harvey said the evidence given by the British army would indicate that behind the barricade were, allegedly, at least three riflemen, at least three people with blast bombs, one person with a sub-machinegun and three people with pistols.
Counsel asked: "Did you see any of that?" The witness replied: "If I had seen any guns or if any blast bombs had gone off, I would have left the area immediately." Mr David Tereshchuk, a documentary film maker for CBS television, said that in 1972 he was working for Thames Television as a researcher and he was in Derry for the Civil Rights march on January 30th.
He was near the barricade in Rossville Street when he saw three or more armoured personnel carriers driving towards it. When they stopped, paratroopers around them almost immediately started firing live rounds.
One paratrooper came further up towards the barricade than the others and started firing towards the wall of Block 1 of the Rossville Flats. The witness saw chunks of masonry falling off the wall of the flats.
Mr Tereshchuk said that he heard nothing that sounded like a machine gun.
The inquiry continues today.