A soldier opened fire with a submachine-gun into a crowded entry on Bloody Sunday, a witness told the Saville inquiry today.
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Mr Gerry Newton made the claim on day 128 of the inquiry, where so far it has been alleged only self-loading rifles and one sniper rifle were fired by troops in Derry's Bogside that day.
He claimed a soldier leaped from the passenger seat of an armoured personnel carrier in the car park of the Rossville Flats and "clobbered" people running past with the butt of the weapon.
In his statement he added: "The soldier moved out two or three yards from the pig [armoured car] and started firing the Stirling [sub-machine gun] in front of him towards the entrance between Blocks 1 and 2 [of the flats].
"He was roaring his head off . . . like he was crazed. The first burst of fire could have been as many as five or six or eight shots. I did not see the shots hitting anyone or where they hit."
The gap between the two blocks was crowded with 100 or more people trying to flee the scene at the time, he said. But no-one is believed to have been shot at that spot.
Counsel to the inquiry Mr Alan Roxburgh asked: "It is only common sense, is it not, that if you fire a submachine-gun towards a group of 100 or more people in a narrow gap like that that you are going to hit some of them?"
He replied: "There is a possibility, yes."
Mr Roxburgh asked: "It is more than a possibility, is it not, Mr Newton, it is almost an inevitability?"
He answered: "I would not think so."
Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, acting for most of the soldiers, put it to Mr Newton that no soldiers who got out of the vehicles had a submachine-gun - a suggestion rejected by the witness.
The inquiry was later shown a photograph of a soldier on Bloody Sunday holding what appeared to be a Stirling just outside the perimeter of the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
Mr Glasgow said it had "always been accepted" that three members of the Composite Platoon of 1 Para's Support Company had submachine-guns on Bloody Sunday.
Earlier it was claimed speakers at the Bloody Sunday march were fired on "directly" and had to lie down to save their lives.
Solicitor Mr Rory McShane told the inquiry he and the then Mid-Ulster MP Ms Bernadette Devlin saved the life of elderly English peer Lord Fenner Brockway when he remained standing and oblivious to the gunfire.
Then an executive member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association he also claimed he spotted gunmen arriving in Derry's Bogside but insisted it was after the British army shooting that killed 13 men that day had ended.
PA