Phil Coulter

Events are being held to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday .

Thirteen people were shot dead and at least 15 others injured when members of the Army's Parachute Regiment opened fire on a civil rights march in Londonderry on 30 January 1972.

It brought worldwide attention to the escalating crisis in Northern Ireland , which came to be known as.

Victims ' families will gather later to walk the route of the civil rights march which ended in tragedy.

The Bloody Sunday Trust, a group established in 1997 to support the bereaved families, has chosen One World, One Struggle as its theme for its the 50th anniversary commemorative programme.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson during Prime Minister 's Questions.

Mr Johnson described Bloody Sunday as " one of the darkest days in our history" and said in The Run up to The Anniversary " we must learn from The Past , reconcile and build a shared and prosperous future".

Ahead of the 50th anniversary, ex-prime Minister David Cameron said his 2010 apology for Bloody Sunday made it clear there.

When the Saville Inquiry was released, Mr Cameron apologised for

The First event on Sunday will see The Victims ' families gather for a walk of remembrance.

The Walk will begin in the Creggan area of The City , with the families following the same route their loved ones on the civil rights march in 1972 had intended to complete.

Members of The Public have been asked by the Bloody Sunday Trust to show their support by lining the route in accordance with.

Thousands gathered in Derry on that January day for a rally organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

They were protesting against a new law giving The Authorities powers to imprison people without Trial - Internment .

The Stormont government had banned such protests, and deployed the Army.

The Intended destination of the demonstrators was the City Centre , but Army barricades blocked marchers, so many demonstrators headed towards Free Derry Corner in the Bogside.

After prolonged skirmishes between groups of youths and the Army, soldiers from the Parachute Regiment moved in to make arrests.

Just before 16:00 GMT, stones were thrown and soldiers responded with rubber bullets, Tear Gas and water cannon.

At 16:07 GMT, paratroopers moved to arrest as many marchers as possible. At 16:10 GMT, soldiers began to Open Fire .

The Crowd will then make its way to the Bloody Sunday Monument in Rossville Street for the annual memorial service.

Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister ) Micheál Martin will lay a wreath at The Memorial and is expected to privately meet the families of those killed.

Jean Hegarty, whose 17-year-old brother Kevin McElhinney was shot and killed on Bloody Sunday , said it was hard To Believe 50 Years had passed.

Kevin, who worked at a local supermarket, was killed as he attempted to flee the firing on Rossville Street.

" It never gets easier to talk about, even After All This Time , for some of us [the Bloody Sunday families] it still sadly feels like it happened just yesterday, " Ms Hegarty told Bbc News NI.

She believes the planned events will be extremely emotional.

" I think The Walk of remembrance will be extremely poignant, given that we will be walking to The Guildhall - a place our Family Members and the Other People on The March never got to reach, " She Said .

Other key events throughout The Day will see Irish President Michael D Higgins deliver a recorded message to the Bloody Sunday families during a special event at The Millennium Forum.

The Event will be hosted by actor Adrian Dunbar , and will feature performances from Bronagh Gallagher , Phil Coulter and The Undertones .

It will take place in front of a limited number of people but will also be live streamed to an online audience.

The Millennium Forum will then fall silent at the precise moment when, on January 30, 1972, members of the Parachute Regiment opened fire in the Bogside.

Another event will see a dramatization of events on Bloody Sunday performed by the Derry Playhouse.

A full list of events taking place in The City on Sunday can be found.

Two public inquiries have been carried out into The Events of Bloody Sunday .

The Widgery Tribunal, which was announced shortly after Bloody Sunday , largely cleared The Soldiers and British authorities of blame.

The Saville Inquiry, published in 2010, found none of The Casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify The Shooting .

The then Prime Minister David Cameron issued an apology on behalf of The State in The House of Commons, saying ".

Following the publication of the Saville Inquiry, The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) began a murder investigation in 2010.

It took A Number of years to complete and detectives then submitted their files to The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) towards The End of 2016.

Having weighed up 125,000 pages of material, prosecutors said on 14 March they would prosecute a soldier, known only as Soldier F, for The Murders of James Wray and William Mckinney on Bloody Sunday .

Soldier F also faced charges for the attempted murders of Patrick O'Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and Michael Quinn .

On 2 July 2021, it was announced Soldier F would not face Trial following a decision by the PPS.

The PPS said after " careful consideration" the decision had been taken due to another recent court ruling which found evidence being relied upon in The Prosecution was inadmissible.

This Was due to the circumstances in which The Evidence was obtained.

The decision not to proceed with the case is now the subject of live judicial review proceedings following a legal challenge brought by a brother of one of the Bloody Sunday Victims .

Source of news: bbc.com