DAY 306: Two members of the Official IRA have admitted firing at British soldiers in Derry on Bloody Sunday. One said he fired a single rifle shot before the deployment of paratroopers into the Bogside and the other said he fired two pistol shots at advancing paratroopers.
The man who fired the rifle shot said he did so after hearing that two civilians, Damien Donaghy and John Johnston, had already been wounded by soldiers. The second man admitted he was the figure in a photograph seen firing two pistol shots at paratroopers as they advanced into the Bogside, killing 13 civilians and wounding 13 others.
Their admissions are contained in 81 pages of statements submitted to the inquiry yesterday by five men who were Official IRA members during the Bogside killings 31 years ago.
One of them also confirms that another Official IRA man was wounded during an exchange of shots with British soldiers hours after the Bloody Sunday killings. The wounded man, who has already been named during the hearings as Red Mickey Doherty, was shot in the leg by a British soldier after he opened fire on an army patrol on the fringe of the Bogside, grazing a soldier's protective flak jacket.
The five, all of whom have been granted anonymity by the inquiry's three judges, include the then officer commanding the Official IRA in the north-west, and they are expected to give evidence next autumn.
The man who fired the two pistol shots said the Official IRA had been ordered to "maintain a defensive stance" during the Bloody Sunday march.
"No one wanted to initiate any contact. We had friends and family members on the march and would not risk injury to them," his statement says.
His statement says that as he ran from the advancing paratroopers, he fired "two shots at the APCs which were in the area".
However, he realised his action was a "futile gesture" and he added: "I do not believe that I hit or came close to hitting anyone from the distance at which I fired."
The man who fired the rifle shot said in his statement he went to an arms dump in Colmcille Court to retrieve a rifle after he realised that two civilians had just been shot in nearby William Street by a soldier as the Bloody Sunday marchers approached the Bogside.