Bloody Sunday inquiry: 18 people claim shot was fired at them

Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin is one of a number of people who claim to have been the target of one of the first shots of Bloody Sunday, it has been alleged.

Edmund Lawson QC told on Day 74 of the Saville Inquiry of at least six other men who believed the round was aimed at them.

Foyle Assembly member Mr McLaughlin, who is set to give evidence to the Tribunal in the Guildhall, Derry, this month, alleges in his written statement that the shooting was a serious effort to blow his head off.

The inquiry has already heard live evidence from three men who witnessed the shot, which Lieutenant N claims to have fired, and been told that 18 people claim it came close to hitting them.

Examining one of the men, William McCloskey, Mr Lawson, who acts for more than 400 soldiers, said: "A lot of people are going to tell the tribunal that they thought the shot or shots were being fired at them".

Among them were Mr McLaughlin, then a 26-year-old refrigeration engineer. He said: "Lieutenant N's lawyers have already told the hearing he admits firing a round over the heads of people on Chamberlain Street in Derry because he felt threatened by an advancing crowd".

The shot is possibly the first fired by soldiers inside the city's Bogside on January 30, 1972 during a military operation in the midst of a civil rights demonstration which ended with 13 Catholic men shot dead.

The current Tribunal of Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, is the second probe into the shootings, one of the most controversial events of the three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland.