Bloody Sunday , or the Bogside Massacre , was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry , Northern Ireland , when British soldiers shot 28 unarmed civilians during a protest march against internment . Fourteen people died : thirteen were killed outright , while the death of another man four months later was attributed to his injuries . Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded . Other protesters were injured by rubber bullets or batons , and two were run down by army vehicles . All of those shot were Catholics . The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association ( NICRA ) . The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion , Parachute Regiment ( " 1 Para " ) . This battalion was involved in two other controversial shootings : the Ballymurphy massacre several months before , and the killing of Protestant civilians in the Shankill several months later . Two investigations were held by the British government . The Widgery Tribunal , held in the immediate aftermath , largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of blame . It described the soldiers ' shooting as " bordering on the reckless " , but accepted their claims that they shot at gunmen and bomb-throwers . The report was widely criticised as a " whitewash " . The Saville Inquiry , chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate , was established in 1998 to reinvestigate the incident . Following a 12-year inquiry , Saville 's report was made public in 2010 and concluded that the killings were both " unjustified " and " unjustifiable " . It found that all of those shot were unarmed , that none were posing a serious threat , that no bombs were thrown , and that soldiers " knowingly put forward false accounts " to justify their firing . The soldiers denied shooting the named victims , but also denied shooting anyone by mistake . On its publication , British prime minister David Cameron made a formal apology on behalf of the United Kingdom . Following this , police began a murder investigation into the killings
Ballymurphy massacre
Ballymurphy massacre
Bloody Sunday (1972)