Bloody Sunday, also known as the Bogside Massacre, was a massacre of Irish anti-internment protesters by the British government that took place on this day in 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland.
Bloody Sunday resulted in the highest number of people killed in a shooting incident during the Troubles and remains the worst mass shooting in Northern Irish history. This violence was in response to a protest organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in opposition to a state policy of internment without trial, introduced in August of 1971.
On January 18th, 1972, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner banned all parades and marches in response to widespread civil unrest. The protest march was organized despite this order.
On the day of the protest, approximately 10,000-15,000 joined the march, however their path was blocked by British Army barriers. The protest descended into chaos, with British soldiers chasing down protesters and attacking them indiscriminately. 26 people were shot, 14 were killed. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers or attending to the wounded, while others were injured by shrapnel, rubber bullets, batons, or being ran down by army vehicles.
The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion Parachute Army, which had perpetrated the Ballymurphy Massacre just months prior. The events of Bloody Sunday greatly increased hostilities between Northern Ireland and the British government. Support for and recruitment by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) rose following the massacre.
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The ratio of people killed by the Brits and their assassins so greatly outweighs the number of people killed by all the republican groups combined that it should immediately make anyone question the propaganda line that the IRA's war against the British was mindless religiously motivated violence.
What always breaks my heart with Bloody Sunday is how many of the dead were 17. Six out of 14 hadn't even become adults yet. They marches for their people and for the hope they could have a future and the British fucking massacred them
They also killed mostly civilians, not even IRA members. Especially the unionist groups they were basically only killing civilians.