Bloody Sunday testimony captured on tape

Thirteen civilains were killed on Bloody Sunday

The horror of Bloody Sunday has been captured in a recording of a man as he lay injured after the day's traumatic events.

The trembling voice of the man, who is now dead, was played on Thursday at the new inquiry into the killings.

The inquiry was ordered by Prime Minister Tony Blair to investigate circumstances surrounding the shooting dead of 13 civilians participating in a civil rights march in January 1972.

A fourteenth person died later from his wounds.

The recording of John Barry Liddy was cut short by the arrival of an ambulance to take him to hospital on 30 January, 1972, the Saville Tribunal was told.

Mr Liddy, a former British serviceman, was then 45 and employed as a barman in the Fort George Army base in the city.

Lord Saville: Heading inquiry

He died in recent years and the recording was obtained by lawyers for the victims from a man in San Francisco.

He spoke of seeing his wife's 17-year-old nephew Michael Kelly shot dead along with three others at a rubble barricade across Rossville Street in Londonderry's Bogside district.

Choking back tears, Mr Liddy said he and Catholic priest Fr Denis Bradley attempted to go to the aid of casualties pleading for help but repeatedly came under fire.

He was arrested that day and delivered his testimony in a semi-conscious state.

He had been thrown onto the street from the barracks where he worked, picked up by some people in a car and taken home to the Creggan estate, according to another man speaking at the start of the recording.

Mr Liddy had suffered broken ribs, severe contusions to the head and had been badly bruised about the body, the unidentified commentator said.

Mr Liddy was a former member of the Royal Navy, British Army and the locally-recruited Ulster Defence Regiment.

He said: "Today in Colmcille Court, the British Army opened fire indiscriminately against people whose only weapons were stones."

Recounting the scenes at the barricade, he said: "Three of them were dead and one of them raised his arm and beckoned us out to help him but again we tried to go out, they shot at us.

"They were calling from across the street for a priest and a boy who was lying dying on the street with his life's blood pumping out on the street and again we couldn't get across.

"At this point the British Army came around the corner, they were no more like human beings than the animals that come from the jungle."

Mr Liddy described his treatment at the hands of the soldiers who detained them.

He said this included being kicked and struck twice with rifles and rubber hose, and beaten "unmercifully".

He said they were also forced to run a gauntlet on arriving at Fort George on Strand Road where detainees were made to stand facing a wall, clutching barbed wire, before the recording halts.