Bloody Sunday unjustified: Cameron

British soldiers' actions in the 1972 Northern Ireland shootings that became known as Bloody Sunday were unjustified, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday.

Cameron made the statement as the British government released a 5,000-page report of an inquiry into the massacre.

On Jan. 30, 1972, British paratroopers opened fire on a protest in the streets of Londonderry, also known as Derry. The shootings left 13 marchers dead and another 15 wounded.

The British army at the time said its soldiers had been fired upon and were only defending themselves when they shot at protesters. The families of those killed have always insisted they were innocent victims.

On Tuesday, the British government released the report of the inquiry led by Lord Saville, a former High Court judge. Authorized in 1998 by former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair, the investigation took 12 years to complete and cost nearly £200 million ($300 million). Saville's probe — the longest and costliest in British history — was originally due to be completed in 2003 at a cost of about £11 million ($17 million).

The report found that the paratroopers lost their self-control and fired into the crowd of people, "none of whom was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury."

"What happened on Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed," the report said. "Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded, and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland."

Speaking in the British Parliament in London, Cameron offered an apology for the actions.

"What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong," he said.

In Londonderry, a crowd estimated by the BBC at roughly 5,000 people broke into applause and cheers as Cameron's comments were broadcast on large-screen televisions.

"Unjustified and unjustifiable. Those are the words we've been waiting to hear since January the 30th of 1972," said Tony Doherty, the son of a victim, as relatives made statements following the report's release.

"The victims of Bloody Sunday have been vindicated, and the soldiers of the Parachute Regiment have been disgraced," Doherty said.

Some relatives of victims ripped up copies of the 1972 Wigery Report, an initial, discredited report into the shooting. That report accepted the accounts of soldiers that they had been responding to IRA attacks.

Some soldiers concocted false stories

Saville's report concluded that some soldiers created cover stories to justify their shooting people in the back, but he wrote that the evidence cannot be used against them at any future criminal proceedings.

"This does not rule out the possibility of future criminal proceedings against an individual, but only means that their own evidence to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry cannot be used against them," Saville wrote.

Cameron said that he supported the British army, but added that "you do not defend the British army by defending the indefensible."

Earlier in the day, prior to receiving advance copies of the inquiry's report, family members of the victims staged a march to Londonderry city hall. Relatives carried photographs of the deceased.

Among the victims was 17-year-old Kevin McElhinney. His sister, Jean Hagerty, was living in Canada at the time but still remembers her emotion when she heard the news.

"Absolute horror, revulsion that someone so young would have to die like that for going on a march that you never expected would end that way," she said. "Also, devastation for my parents that the heart of the family was just ripped out."