Lord Saville concluded: "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.

"Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded, and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland."

General Sir Mike Jackson, who was the head of the British army until 2006 and who had been an officer in the unit which killed the protesters at Bloody Sunday and who had himself been present in the city, offered an apology.

He said: "An illegal march took place which ended in the terrible tragedy of 13 innocent civilians being killed without justification. The prime minister has provided a fulsome apology and I join him in so doing.

"I recall that nearly 40 years ago in Northern Ireland the situation was grim with significant loss of life on all sides. Over the 38 years of deployment in Northern Ireland the vast majority of the 250,000 servicemen who served there behaved admirably, often in the face of severe provocation and with the loss of several hundred lives and with 6,000 wounded."

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