A senior nurse at Altnagelvin Hospital described yesterday how soldiers looked on in silence as she attended the bodies of their victims on the streets of the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
Mrs Ursula Clifford said when she shouted at the soldiers something to the effect of "why did you do it?", they "did not even flinch".
"They just stood there and looked at us. They would have been able to summon medical assistance if they wanted to, but they did absolutely nothing to help us in any way."
During her evidence, the inquiry adjourned briefly and Mrs Clifford, who worked as a theatre sister, left the witness box to give medical assistance to a woman who collapsed in the public seating area.
Mrs Clifford, who is a sister of the Derry-born singer, Feargal Sharkey, described how she went with her elderly aunt to listen to the speeches at Free Derry Corner as the civil rights march ended on Bloody Sunday. Suddenly there was the noise of continuous gunfire and everybody crouched down.
She could see army vehicles at the northern end of Rossville Street. As she and her aunt attempted to make their way home, she came upon a male body in the Glenfada Park area and people in the crowd told her the man had had a heart attack.
She saw no sign of blood, but concluded that the man, whom she believed was Gerard McKinney, was either dead or dying. Across Rossville Street she saw two bodies lying close to the gable end of the Rossville Flats.
She and her aunt carried two blankets over towards the bodies.
"We huddled together and edged across the street," she said. "I was using her [her aunt] as a shield, as I couldn't believe that anyone would shoot her as she was an older woman."
Soldiers wearing combat gear and carrying rifles watched them. "They looked very tense, there was total silence as we edged across."
Subsequently, the witness said, she assisted a doctor who was examining two other gunshot victims in a house in Abbey Park.
One of these was the youth, Gerald Donaghey, on whose body British army personnel later claimed to have found four nail bombs. Mrs Clifford said she did not believe she could have failed to see bulky objects in the pockets of the boy's tight jeans when she examined him.
Another witness, Mr Joseph Gallagher, described how he felt a bullet pass through his hair as he bent down to Jim Wray, who had been shot beside him as they both ran away through Glenfada Park.
The inquiry continues today.
The inquiry is to investigate the sources of allegations made about Mr Martin McGuinness's actions on Bloody Sunday in a recently published biography of the Sinn FΘin MP.Extracts from the book, "From Guns to Government", were published in the Sunday Times at the weekend.