The Ministry of Defence is preparing to pay compensation to relatives of those killed or injured by soldiers on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland.
Fourteen people died after paratroopers opened fire in January 1972 during a civil rights protest in Londonderry.
Prime Minister David Cameron has already apologised to victims and said the shootings were wrong.
An MoD spokesman said: "We acknowledge the pain felt by these families for nearly 40 years, and that members of the armed forces acted wrongly. For that, the Government is deeply sorry.
"We are in contact with the families' solicitors and where there is a legal liability to pay compensation we will do so."
Lord Saville drew up a landmark report last year which criticised the Army over the killings. His panel ruled that the Army fired first and without provocation.
It found all 14 who died and the others who were injured almost four decades ago had been unarmed and were completely innocent.
The troops had also continued to shoot as the protesters fled or lay fatally wounded on the ground. One father was shot as he went to tend to his injured son, the mammoth 5,000-page report revealed.
Soldiers later insisted they had only retaliated, in a bid to cover-up the truth, the document - described as "shocking" by Mr Cameron - said.
Bloody Sunday was one of the worst state acts of the conflict and helped ignite 30 years of violence by the IRA. Victims have spent years campaigning for justice and the revision of an original probe into the massacre which they branded a whitewash.