Relatives of the 13 people shot dead on Bloody Sunday observed a minute's silence yesterday at the scene of the killings to mark the 31st anniversary of the shootings. The minute's silence took place at 4.10 p.m., the time when paratroopers opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside in Derry on January 30th, 1972.
Later last night several hundred people attended a memorial Mass in St Mary's church in the Creggan Estate.
In London yesterday, about 30 protesters handed in a letter to British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, calling on him to order the Ministry of Defence to hand over to the Saville inquiry missing photographs taken by British army photographers on the day of the killings.
The protesters said they believed that more than 1,000 photographs taken by 10 army photographers as well as several hours of cine film taken by soldiers from an army helicopter, were still in the hands of the ministry.
The letter stated: "We are informed by the families and wounded that the army's operation order on the day specified that 10 photographers and one cine film operator deployed in an army helicopter would execute a mission to provide maximum photo coverage of the civil rights march and associated incidents on Bloody Sunday.
"Today, almost five years into the inquiry, not one of well over 1,000 photographs which were taken on Bloody Sunday has been provided to the inquiry by the MOD nor has any appreciable progress been made in determining the whereabouts of the original cine film which was taken at the height of the massacre. It is simply unbelievable that no one who was in the employ of the MOD knows the location or what has become of this material," it added.
A spokesman for the inquiry said the matter of the missing photographs was something they were still looking into. "It is an issue we are still investigating, but we do not have a view if these do indeed exist."