Soldiers started shooting as soon as they dismounted from their
armoured personnel carriers in Derry on Bloody Sunday, it was claimed today.
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Mr Thomas Mullarkey alleged the paratroopers who came into the no-go Bogside district in the aftermath of a civil rights parade in January 1972 were "firing on the move" that day.
A 33-year-old architect living in Derry at the time, Mr Mullarkey also claimed to have seen evidence that soldiers fired from the historic walls overlooking the scene - in the form of "three puffs of smoke from the mouths of rifle muzzles".
And after the shootings he said he "formed the impression" that guns were being handed by three or four civilians in the Bogside to "a huddle of people" from the back of a pick-up truck on Fahan Street West.
Giving evidence on day 69 of the Inquiry's public hearings, Mr Mullarkey described seeing a youth - probably Mr Damien Donaghy - shot in the leg in the minutes leading up to the entry of the troops into the district. Mr Donaghy is believed to have been the first person to have been shot that day. He was expected to appear in the witness box today but it now seems likely that his evidence will be put off until tomorrow.
Mr Mullarkey said he was on William Street, on the periphery of the Bogside, and "watched as the muzzle of a rifle poked out between the bars of the grille" of a ground floor window in a deserted building where soldiers are said to have been posted.
He also claimed to have seen the arrival of APCs carrying Paratroopers in the Bogside.
Asked by Mr Edmund Lawson QC, representing most of the soldiers, if the troopers took up firing position first, he replied: "They fired even before they got into any prone or other fixed firing position . . . They were firing on the move when I saw them."
PA