A series of military witnesses have insisted that two men they saw crawling towards the entrance to Rossville Flats on Bloody Sunday had either one or two rifles between them.
Various statements describing how several soldiers opened fire on these men were examined at the inquiry yesterday, and counsel to the tribunal, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, said there were both similarities and dissimilarities in these accounts.
One paratrooper, who was among a group of soldiers behind a wall on the west side of Rossville Street in the Bogside, said he recollected that a "fire order" was given about a window in Rossville Flats.
Private 32 said: "A fire order means that a target has been identified, not necessarily that anyone should fire at it. It serves to focus everyone's attention on the target."
In his statement, he said he saw the two men crawling, and one was dragging what looked like a rifle - "I am quite clear in my own mind that it was a rifle," he said. Then he heard shots being fired by a colleague.
This witness said an "order to fire" was different to a "fire order".
He added: "The order to fire means `shoot', but there might not have been an order to fire if the soldier had identified the target and deemed it appropriate to shoot immediately. No one gave me an order to fire."
Private 32 said that at a subsequent point, the CO of the 1st Parachute Regiment, Col Derek Wilford, arrived at their position and shouted to everybody: "Stop shooting, fire only when told to do so".
The colonel told them that if anybody was going to fire it would be Soldier K, who was the regimental sniper.
". . . I took it to mean that if any of us identified a target we were to tell K, who would be the one to take the shot," said the witness.
Mr Clarke reviewed the Widgery Inquiry evidence of Sergeant 002, who had said that Soldiers K, L and M were ahead of him at the wall and as he moved up, K fired one round towards the barricade.
Sergeant 002 saw that a man was crawling away from the barricade, "and I could see that he had a rifle in his arms". The witness continued: "I ordered Soldiers M and L to fire at this man. They both fired two rounds and I could see that he had been hit.
"A second man then started to crawl in the same direction, but as I could not see that he had any weapon with him, and there were four or five people gathered at the door of the flats, I ordered M and L to cease fire."
Soldier 118, described as an "observation specialist", was stationed on top of the Embassy Ballroom which overlooked the Bogside. According to his statement, he saw a small group of civilians lie down behind the rubble barricade, and saw a single paratrooper firing aimed shots "continuously" south towards Free Derry Corner.
He also saw about six rounds strike the rubble on the southern side of the barricade and he thought these came from the Free Derry Corner direction.
"My impression was that someone was shooting from the south towards the people at the barricade . . . the angle of the dust spurting up would indicate to me that the shots were probably not coming from the city walls."