A man claimed today he heard gunfire in the minutes after Bloody Sunday that he believed was “the IRA having a go”.
Mr Robert McLaughlin told the Saville Inquiry he heard shots as he walked through the grounds of St Columb's College on January 30th, 1972 - well away from the scene of the British army shootings that left 13 men dead.
He also told the inquiry he saw three or four men he assumed were members of the IRA inside a car on Westland Street and said: “I thought they looked as if they were assessing what was happening.”
Another witness, Mr William Lindsay, described to the hearing in Derry how he was standing close to Free Derry Corner when he saw troops to the north on Rossville Street open fire.
Mr Lindsay also claimed to have seen shooting from the City Walls overlooking the Bogside from the east.
Another witness, Mr Bernard Heaney, described seeing six to eight gunmen arriving in Westland Street - a sighting already described to the tribunal by other people.
He left the scene, fearing the shooting would start again and said: "As I continued making my way into Cable Street I was listening carefully for the sounds of gunfire to start up again but I did not hear anything. It was all over."
The inquiry also heard from Mr James Duddy, who claimed soldiers fired towards people huddled behind the "threepenny bits" - a cluster of hexagonal brick platforms behind the Rossville flats.
"I remember the sheer volume of shots that were being fired by this time," he said. "The army seemed to be shooting at anything that moved."Mr Duddy was a nephew of John Johnston who was shot and wounded on Bloody Sunday and died six months later.
Earlier Mr Duddy told the tribunal how he threw a milk bottle at paratroopers on the fringe of the Bogside before they came in.
"I was young and cocky and shouted to the paras: ‘We'll teach you boys a lesson today’. They shouted back: ‘No, we'll teach you a lesson'.
"This meant nothing to me at the time but, looking back, it was as if the paras knew what was going to happen."
PA