A British soldier who fired twelve shots on Bloody Sunday in Derry has told the Saville Inquiry that the events of that day 31 years ago were a tragedy.
Soldier S said he regretted all the deaths that occurred on Bloody Sunday, including a civilian gunman he claims he shot twice and may have killed.
The retired soldier said he could remember very little about the events of 30 January 1972 and relied on his evidence to the Widgery Inquiry, held shortly after the shootings.
Soldier S who was eighteen at the time also apologised for signing statements for the military police in 1972, which he admitted were full of inaccuracies.
He said he regretted all the deaths on Bloody Sunday but stood by his own actions on the day 13 civilians were shot dead by soldiers. A fourteenth man died later.
The retired soldier said accounts in his statements to military police that he saw a gunman firing around six shots from a ground floor window of Rossville Flats and nail and acid bombs being thrown at soldiers, could not be trusted.
'Those statements were made when I was an 18-year-old soldier on the day of Bloody Sunday', he said.
He added that there were 'definitely inaccuracies' in the statements. He said he was not proud of that fact. He also said military police may have altered his statement to suit things at the time.
Soldier S stood by his original claims that he believed he wounded a civilian gunman or gunmen on Bloody Sunday.
In his evidence he said he was fired at by a gunman from an alleyway at the Rossville flats and returned four sets of three rounds before hitting at least one gunman.
He said that he believed he hit a gunman with two of the volleys, but he was not sure whether he hit one gunman or two separate men as his target was at times obscured by the crowd.
