‘Bloody Sunday’ of 1972 Marked by 10,000 Catholics

More than 10,000 Roman Catholics retraced the path Sunday where British soldiers shot and killed 14 protesters in 1972, a massacre that fueled Catholic bitterness toward British rule of Northern Ireland.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s promise Thursday to launch a new investigation into the shootings known as “Bloody Sunday” sapped some of the usual anger from the annual commemoration.

But the procession from the sprawling Catholic Creggan district down rain-slicked slopes to the Bogside neighborhood where the killings took place Jan. 30, 1972, still had a militant tone.

Beret-clad musicians played Irish republican tunes on fifes and thumped bass drums decorated with pictures of assault rifles and with the names of slain Irish Republican Army members. Some bands chanted, “I-I-IRA!”

In the lead, relatives of the victims carried crosses bearing their names and photos.

The chairman of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party told the crowd at Free Derry Corner--marking the Bogside boundary where the IRA manned road barricades against British authorities in the early 1970s--that Blair must ensure the soldiers are charged with murder.

“Nothing less than a full, and I mean full, judicial inquiry with international dimensions will suffice,” Mitchel McLaughlin said. “We will not trust the British government to give us the truth.”