Paras should not have been sent into Derry, says soldier

THE Bloody Sunday shootings would not have happened if the Parachute Regiment had not been deployed in Derry, a soldier claimed yesterday.

Soldier INQ 989 told the Saville Inquiry in London he believed the responsibility for the deaths of 13 civil rights marchers and the 13 casualties lay with those who ordered paratroopers into the city on January 30, 1972.

The former corporal in the Royal Anglian Regiment said he and his colleagues cheered as they heard news of the first casualties on the radio, but soon realised something was “terribly wrong”.