国际英语新闻：British prime minister apologizes for Bloody Sunday Killings

LONDON, June 15 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron apologized on Tuesday for the Bloody Sunday Killings, when soldiers shot and killed 13 innocent people at a demonstration in a city in Northern Ireland 38 years ago.

Cameron's apology came as the British government published a report into the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972, where 13 protesters were shot and killed on the streets as they demonstrated for civil rights. Seven were teenagers. Another innocent civilian died of wounds in hospital some months later.

The report, by a leading lawyer Lord Saville, was commissioned by the British government. It took 12 years to complete and cost about 191 million pounds (about 300 million U.S. dollars). It was the longest inquiry in British legal history, and 2,500 people gave evidence.

British Prime Minister David Cameron listens during a news conference in Kabul June 10, 2010. Cameron arrived in Afghanistan for talks with Karzai on Thursday, his first visit as prime minister to a country that his new coalition government has set as its top foreign policy priority.

In the 10-volume, 5,000-page report Lord Saville concluded that soldiers were responsible for the deaths on Bloody Sunday and that none of those killed had posed a threat to the soldiers.

The report said: "The immediate responsibility for the deaths and injuries on Bloody Sunday lies with those members of Support Company (from the British army) whose unjustifiable firing was the cause of the those deaths and injuries."

The report added: "None of the casualties was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, or indeed was doing anything else that could on any view justify their shooting."