A paratrooper who provided anti-sniper cover for four colleagues in the Bogside in Derry on Bloody Sunday, said yesterday he did not see them firing a total of 29 shots.
Thirteen civilians were shot dead and 13 others were wounded by paratroopers after they were deployed into the Bogside on January 30th, 1972, during a civil rights march.
Yesterday, Mr David Longstaff, who was a member of the Parachute Regiment's Support Company on Bloody Sunday, told the 374th day of the inquiry that although he heard gunfire when his four colleagues entered the Glenfada Park area of the Bogside, he was unable to say if the shots had been fired by paratroopers or by the IRA.
Three of the Bloody Sunday victims were shot dead in Glenfada Park and four others were wounded after paratroopers claimed they were confronted by nail-bombers and gunmen.
One of the four paratroopers, known as Soldier H, fired 19 shots. The witness said that although he glanced into Glenfada Park from behind his four colleagues, he did not see them shooting.
"I heard gunfire, that is all I can recall," he told the inquiry's three judges.
He said he neither saw nor heard any nail-bombs exploding in the area, nor did he see any armed civilians.
Mr Longstaff said when he looked into Glenfada Park he saw a number of people lying on the ground. "It did not concern me. I took only a fleeting glimpse at them and when I registered that they were no threat to me or my mates I stopped looking. I was more concerned about any threats to me and my mates."
The witness also said that before he took up his anti-sniping position, he returned fire after a sniper had fired at him.
"It is an instantaneous reaction to fire back. If your life is threatened you shoot, preferably one round, one kill. You also aim for the centre of the target, I thought I was fully justified in what I was doing. I was being sniped at," he said.
The witness said that although he neither saw nor heard anything on the day which justified the Bloody Sunday killings, he had full confidence in his colleagues' decisions to open fire.
He said that while he accepted that two of his colleagues, known to the inquiry as soldiers F and G, were responsible for "quite a few deaths that day", he would have "trusted those two men with my life".
The inquiry resumes today.