Bloody Sunday soldier 'predicted high body count'

A soldier predicted that "lots of bodies would leave the Bogside" on the afternoon of the Bloody Sunday killings, the Saville Inquiry has heard.

Thomas Columba Doherty claimed the comment was passed by a soldier, who was smiling, a short distance from the scene of the shootings that day.

Mr Doherty also claimed to have seen what may have been an IRA man with a gun in Londonderry's Bogside district in the moments after the first two casualties were shot.

Mr Doherty, who was a 23-year-old teacher at the time, was the third witness to give the Tribunal an account of a gunman appearing in the area of Kells Walk and the second to describe a group of men turn on him.

He said in his statement: "The gunman was immediately accosted by a group of men, although I'm not sure how many.

"I heard at least one of them say: 'There's no shooting today' and the gunman was physically pushed back into the house."

Later, he was challenged by Edwin Glasgow QC, representing most of the soldiers, about why he made no mention of the sighting in a statement he gave to the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

Mr Doherty said the subject did not crop up in the interviews he conducted.

Earlier Mr Doherty admitted he was "bothered" by the language of his own statement of 1972. And asked about his comment that "mass murder" had taken place that day, he admitted he had actually seen no-one shot.