British military chiefs did not know that paratroopers had shot two members of the public just minutes before soldiers shot dead a dozen unarmed men on Bloody Sunday, it was disclosed today.

Soldiers who burst into the Bogside on Bloody Sunday were “raring to go” and arrest rioters, a British Major General said today.

Paratroopers who opened fire on a civil rights march which became Bloody Sunday did not set out to murder that day but ended up doing just that, the inquiry into the killings heard today.